TrustToken Raises $20 Million with Major VC Support

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Some of the biggest names in the crypto VC sector, including Andreessen Horowitz and BlockTower Capital, have supported a USD 20 million strategic financing for asset tokenizer TrustToken, developer of the TrueUSD (/TUSD) stablecoin.

According to a press release out of San Francisco Monday, TrustToken’s capital raise, which was also backed by Danhua Capital and GGV Capital, among others, will finance the development of the TrustToken platform and expansion of its legal, partnership, product, and engineering departments.

The company said that, since launching in March 2018, its market capitalization has grown to USD 49 million, with an average daily trading volume of USD 22 million.

“The support of these leading investment firms represents a significant step towards our goal to build a compliant tokenization platform for currencies, commodities, and real-world assets,” said TrustToken CEO Danny An in the statement. “We will draw on the combined expertise and network of these firms as we grow our industry partnerships and extend the reach of our first product, TrueUSD.”

TrueUSD, the company’s USD-backed stablecoin was launched in January to provide cryptocurrency traders a hedge against volatility. TrustToken says TrueUSD provides full collateral, regular auditing and legal protections to redeem tokens for USD.

“Tokenization of real-world assets will produce value much in the same way that ‘equitization’ did. We can now buy fractional ownership in a basket of commercial office buildings or commodities via equity instruments,” said Ari Paul, CIO and Managing Partner, of BlockTower, which earlier this year raised USD 140 million to expand its digital currency hedge fund. “Tokenization will further reduce friction in asset trading and ownership,” he added.

“We are thrilled to back the TrustToken team and its global ambition to tokenize assets,” said Jeff Richards, Managing Partner at GGV Capital, which has USD 3.8 billion in capital under management.   “One of the most significant benefits of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology is the potential to democratize and increase global participation in financial markets. TrustToken is one of the leading platforms driving this concept forward on a worldwide basis, and doing it with trust at the core of its mission.”