Digital asset bank Sygnum has raised $90 million at an $800 million post-money valuation. The Series B round was led by listed Hong Kong alternative asset manager Sun Hung Kai & Co. Limited. Existing strategic investors Japan’s SBI and Siam Commercial Bank’s SCB 10X also participated along with new investors. These included Canada’s Meta Investments, and blockchain NFT and gaming firms Animoca Brands and Wemade.
Sygnum has a banking license in Switzerland and an asset management license in Singapore, from where it jointly runs a digital asset investment fund with SBI and Italy’s Azimut.
In late 2020 the company said it might consider a future IPO on the SIX Digital Exchange and Singapore’s future digital asset exchange.
Sygnum said its client base has reached 1,000, ranging from institutions to private investors, and assets under management are more than $2 billion.
Part of the funding will be used for DeFi yield generating products where participants will be whitelisted, as well as staking services. It has an existing commercial partnership with Dfinity Foundation, which governs the Dfinity smart contract platform.
“We have a strategic vision to expand our fund management offerings into digital assets,” said Lee Seng Huang, Group Executive Chairman of Sun Hung Kai & Co. “Amidst growing institutional demand and regulatory oversight of this sector, Sygnum, with its track record as a fully-regulated digital asset bank and asset manager, is the ideal partner for us to co-develop digital asset focused products.”
Of late, Sygnum has been getting more involved in DeFi and launched a structured product in December that invests in up to ten DeFi tokens. It has also tokenized a CryptoPunk NFT and a Picasso as well as more conventional assets such as SME loans and its own stock.
