London-based crypto startup OpenTrade has raised $17 million in a strategic round, bringing its total funding to more than $30 million as it targets expansion into new markets.
The round was led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global, according to a statement shared with The Block on Wednesday.
OpenTrade, which bills itself as an institutional-grade platform for onchain and real-world asset-backed lending and stablecoin yield products, said it will use the fresh capital to expand its infrastructure across both permissioned and permissionless systems.
The product suite targeted for this expansion includes a permissionless protocol layer and Curation+, a vault curation framework the company said is designed to structure yield strategies across real-world and onchain assets for fintechs, neobanks, treasuries, and asset issuers.
Unlike typical decentralized finance vault curators that focus primarily on protocol selection, Curation+ utilizes regulated asset management oversight to design portfolios across both real-world assets and onchain instruments, according to the company.
OpenTrade said its permissionless infrastructure allows traditional and onchain asset issuers to access decentralized distribution channels via “position-tracking tokens” without requiring proprietary infrastructure. This system is currently live through Sierra Protocol, where the SIERRA liquid yield token is backed by curated vaults containing money market funds, commercial paper, and trade finance, the company added.
In addition to scaling these products, OpenTrade said it plans to expand its asset management and trading team, increase engineering capacity, and establish a dedicated customer success function.
The expansion plans come as OpenTrade saw its total value locked surge past the $200 million mark last year. The company is optimistic that its transaction volume will scale to over $1 billion by the end of 2026, after hitting more than $250 million in 2025.
Meanwhile, stablecoins continue to surge, with the supply of U.S. dollar-pegged assets surpassing $302 billion, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Tether’s USDT accounts for approximately $189.5 billion of that total, while Circle's USDC represents roughly $79 billion.
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