A Brisbane company that is making it easy for institutional investors to buy Bitcoin has received US$1.8 million in a private Series A funding round.
The private funding round values Monochrome Asset Management at around A$20 million, the company said.
Among those investing were Litecoin creator Charlie Lee; Synthetix founder Kain Warwick; former Binance Holdings (global) chief financial officer Wei Zhou; and Blockstream chief strategy officer Samson Mow.
Former Binance Australia chief executive Jeff Yew founded Monochrome in April as a way to offer wholesale investors Bitcoin exposure in the form of a unit trust, making it easy to add the new asset class to traditional investment portfolios.
Yew told Stockhead in June that Monochrome had fielded inquiries from some of Australia’s largest wealth groups and a superannuation fund.
“The quality of investor Monochrome has been able to engage with is fundamentally illustrative of our position in the digital asset industry,” said Monochrome chief investment officer David Hobart, a former hedge fund manager.
“They are some of the most respected and informed minds operating in this industry, not just in Australia, but across the globe.”
Monochrome consists of a 10-person team with “more than a century of financial expertise with talents from ABN AMRO, Rest Super, IFM Investors, BNY Mellon and firms alike to provide a regulated, reliable and safe means for institutional investment into this asset class,” Yew said.
Zhou, the former Binance CFO, said he was happy to invest in Monochrome.
“Australia is known for its progressive regulatory stance on digital assets, and I am proud to support Monochrome as the country’s leading investment firm specialising in regulated access into digital assets.”
“Jeff has deep domain expertise in this field, as well as a track record of driving successful businesses in the digital asset industry.”