Cycles, a cryptocurrency startup and economic experiment founded by Cosmos co-founder Ethan Buchman, has raised $6.4 million in new funding.
This round was led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Compound VC, Primitive Ventures, and angel investors. Cycles has now raised a total of $8.7 million, following a $2.3 million pre-seed round in May 2025 co-led by CMCC Global and Maven 11.
Cycles is an "open clearing protocol" designed to enable more efficient multilateral netting, allowing more participants to clear more trades with less capital. In the traditional finance (TradFi) model, clearinghouses settle debts between parties without requiring massive fund transfers for each transaction or payment.
The new protocol leverages zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments (TEEs), graph algorithms, and other technologies to create an obligation network that can clear the most transactions with the least capital.
Ethan Buchman, founder of Cycles, said: “Our goal is to build a universal, capital-efficient payment and financial engine that enables everyone to do more with less. Settlement is a powerful financial tool, but currently only the largest financial institutions can access it through clearinghouses, or only a few friends can split bills.”
Buchman previously stated that Cycles was inspired by certain clearing methods pioneered by the Medici Bank in the 15th century. The Medici Bank functioned as a pan-European international clearinghouse, minimizing capital flows between branches through the use of letters of credit.
According to the announcement, Lynq and FalconX will participate as anchor partners in the launch of Cycles Prime and will test the beta version of the system alongside market makers, prime brokers, exchanges, and a network of up to ten “prime trading firms.”
Matt Lepow of FalconX said: “Traditional settlement systems were not designed for today’s 24/7 global markets. We support Cycles’ mission to create a unified clearing layer for on-chain finance—a crucial step in modernizing global financial infrastructure. As a pilot partner of Cycles Prime, FalconX is honored to provide institutions with a more efficient way to manage short-term debt.”
The startup will also launch a stablecoin called Cycles Pay, integrated with Cycles' clearing engine.