London-based crypto startup OpenTrade raised $17 million in a strategic funding round, bringing its total funding to over $30 million, with the goal of expanding into new markets.
According to a statement shared with The Block on Wednesday, this funding round was led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global.
OpenTrade describes itself as an institutional-grade platform for on-chain and real-world asset-backed lending and stablecoin yield products, and says it will use this new funding to expand its infrastructure across both permissioned and permissionless systems.
The target product suite for this expansion includes a permissionless protocol layer and Curation+, which the company says is a treasury management framework designed to help fintech companies, neobanks, treasuries, and asset issuers build yield strategies for real-world and on-chain assets.
Unlike typical decentralized finance, Curation+ primarily focuses on protocol selection and leverages regulated asset management oversight to design portfolios encompassing real-world assets and on-chain tools.
OpenTrade states that its permissionless infrastructure enables traditional asset issuers and on-chain asset issuers to access decentralized distribution channels through "position-tracking tokens," without requiring proprietary infrastructure. The company adds that the system is now live on Sierra Protocol, where the SIERRA liquidity yield token is backed by a curated vault containing money market funds, commercial paper, and trade finance.
In addition to scaling these products, OpenTrade also plans to expand its asset management and trading teams, enhance engineering capabilities, and establish a dedicated customer success function.
As OpenTrade rolls out its expansion plans, its total value locked last year surpassed the $200 million mark. The company is optimistic that, following over $250 million in trading volume in 2025, its trading volume will exceed $1 billion by the end of 2026.
Meanwhile, stablecoins continue to surge, with the supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins exceeding $302 billion, according to data from The Block. Dashboard Tether’s USDT accounts for approximately $189.5 billion of the total, while Circle’s USDC accounts for approximately $79 billion.