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Keyrock raises EUR4.3m to build a universal liquidity solution for digital assets markets

Keyrock, a digital asset market maker building scalable, self-adaptive technologies to support efficient markets, has raised EUR4.3 million to accelerate its growth. The Brussels based business secured investment from SIX Fintech Ventures and MiddleGame Ventures. Existing investors Volta Ventures, Seeder Fund and TNN Patrimony are also taking part in the round. Capital markets worldwide are on the verge of tremendous innovation and potential disruption. Through the ICO frenzy, the blockchain has proven to be an efficient way to create digital assets. The resulting assets are easily exchangeable 24/7, worldwide, and completely fractionable. Capital markets incumbents are now heavily investing to apply that same principle to traditional financial instruments, be it stocks, commodities, or derivatives. SIX, Nasdaq, Deutsche Börse, ASX have all launched their own internal projects to support the impending disruption of traditional capital markets by digital assets. For this disruption to take place and 

to provide more value to all market participants than the status quo, liquidity will be essential. 

Keyrock has relentlessly built a highly scalable infrastructure and system allowing it to provide liquidity to markets with an exceptionally low marginal cost. Having started on crypto assets and currently connected to over 70 trading venues, Keyrock is now setting its sight on regulated digital assets. The company aims to be instrumental in a disruption as impactful on capital markets as the switch from paper to electronic trading was in the late 90’s. 

Kevin de Patoul, Keyrock CEO and co-founder, says: “Welcoming SIX Fintech Ventures and MiddleGame Ventures as investors is the ideal scenario for us. SIX is at the forefront of incumbent exchanges’ forays in digital assets through its flagship project SDX. Their experience and expertise in building successful  exchanges will drastically accelerate our development. MiddleGame Ventures’ team has a lifetime of experience in fintech and will therefore be a precious help in navigating the disruption of a well-established market and scaling up our company. We could not be more excited to have them both on board and to keep on building our vision of efficient markets with them!” 

Andreas Iten, SIX Fintech Ventures, says: “The world of cryptos and digital assets has huge potential. Yet the segment is very fragmented with several digital exchanges, a lot of issuers and no regulated infrastructure, resulting in low liquidity. This is a huge obstacle for the adoption of digital assets – especially by institutional players. We believe in the tokenization of assets, where Keyrock has an integral part by providing liquidity to the digital asset world. We met Keyrock during the F10 acceleration program. Beside the large market opportunity, the outstanding, driven and diligent team of Keyrock convinced us. We are looking forward to work together with the Founders and our co-investors MiddleGame Ventures and Volta Ventures on the Board.”

Pascal Bouvier, MiddleGame Ventures, says: “One of our core themes at MGV is the rise of digital assets as the next evolutionary step for capital markets and asset management. For us, true rise of digital assets (crypto, endogenous to a protocol, tokenised representations of physical or financial assets) implies new market structures, new pre-issuance, issuance and post-issuance processes. That is why we firmly believe in Keyrock and are very excited to invest in them, as they are building the foundation for liquidity management and market making of these new assets going forward.” 

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