Summary

  • Blueprint Finance said it has secured a strategic investment to develop Concrete, in a round led by Polychain Capital and joined by BitGo, FalconX, and Bullish.
  • Concrete is a DeFi infrastructure platform for institutional investors, with deposited assets surpassing $140 million and annual transaction volume exceeding $20 billion.
  • Blueprint Finance said it plans to use the funding to expand vault infrastructure, develop new financial products, and strengthen partnerships targeting institutional investors.

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Global digital-asset investment firm Hyperithm said on November 9 that Blueprint Finance, the developer of portfolio company Concrete, has secured a strategic investment.

The round was led by crypto-focused venture capital firm Polychain Capital. Participants included digital-asset custodian BitGo, institutional prime broker FalconX, market makers Keyrock and Flowdesk, and Bullish, a crypto exchange listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The investment amount was not disclosed. Blueprint Finance had previously raised a total of $17 million across two earlier rounds.

Concrete is a decentralized finance, or DeFi, infrastructure platform that helps institutional investors and asset managers manage digital assets on blockchain networks. When investors deposit stablecoins or Bitcoin, the platform's vault service allocates those assets across multiple DeFi protocols based on preset strategies. It also includes automated risk-management features designed to reduce the risk of forced liquidation caused by swings in collateral value.

After integrating with Binance Wallet this year, assets in Concrete's USDT-based vaults exceeded $140 million within a month. More recently, it launched its own dollar-based token, concUSD, in partnership with stablecoin infrastructure company M0. According to Blueprint Finance, more than $20 billion in annual transactions are being processed through Ethereum-based Concrete and Solana-based Glow Finance.

Polychain Capital, which joined the round, was founded by Olaf Carlson-Wee, an early Coinbase employee. It is known for early investments in major DeFi projects including Uniswap, Compound and MakerDAO. Concrete said the round will allow it to expand partnerships across institutional financial services including custody, liquidity provision and trade execution.

Hyperithm has invested in Concrete since its early days. The firm now runs digital-asset investment and asset-management businesses from Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. Its portfolio includes real-world asset tokenization platform Midas, Japanese yen stablecoin issuer JPYC, and institutional derivatives trading infrastructure provider Kemet.

"For institutional money to move into DeFi, custody and risk management need to be as strong as they are in traditional finance," Hyperithm Chief Executive Officer Oh Sang-rok said. "The fact that companies like BitGo and FalconX came in as shareholders means Concrete has met that standard."

Co-Chief Executive Officer Lee Won-jun said institutions in Hong Kong and Singapore have started looking at on-chain yield products. Infrastructure such as Concrete needs to be in place first for that capital to come in, he added.

Blueprint Finance plans to use the new funding to expand its vault infrastructure, develop new financial products and strengthen partnerships aimed at institutional investors.

Suehyeon Lee