ClearToken Raises $10M From Institutional Investors Including Nomura’s Laser Digital

Cleartoken, a cryptocurrency clearing house, has received over $10 million in seed investment from institutional investors, the company said Wednesday.

Investment came from firms including Laser Digital, the digital assets subsidiary of Nomura, liquidity providers including Flow Traders and GSR and from digital asset companies LMAX Digital and Zodia Custody.

Clearing houses reduce counterparty risk by acting as the buyer to every seller and seller to every buyer. ClearToken will offer the benefits of horizontal clearing and settlement for digital assets, the firm said.

“Clearing houses serve the market better when they are ‘horizontal’, connected across multiple trading venues, as opposed to ‘vertical’, serving just one venue in a silo,” the company said in its white paper. “Horizontal models enable participants to trade across multiple venues and provide mechanisms to streamline their clearing and settlement activities in a single place, bringing operational and cost benefits and encouraging wider access to multiple pools of liquidity.”

ClearToken plans to be fully regulated in the U.K. and has started the process of obtaining clearing house recognition from the Bank of England. The company plans to offer preliminary settlement services this year and central counterparty clearing (CCP) services in the next 12-18 months.

“Our investors have recognised that the U.K. government’s progressive legislative program to recognise and regulate digital assets enabling their safe adoption, combined with the U.K.’s existing position as a global leader in clearing services for securities markets, makes the U.K. the ideal jurisdiction to host the first digital asset clearing house,” CEO Benjamin Santos-Stephens said in a statement.