DeFi, a peer-to-peer financial system that uses blockchain technology, is among the fastest growing sectors of the crypto industry. It includes prediction markets like Polymarket, NFTs like Trump’s digital trading cards, and stablecoins, a type of crypto designed to fluctuate in line with a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar.
August, a crypto-focused prime brokerage firm, is seeking to make it easier for investors to access all sorts of DeFi, short for decentralized finance, through one platform. The company has raised $10 million in a Series A led by Dragonfly Ventures. Other investors in the round include SCB Limited, 6th Man Ventures, and Foresight Ventures. August’s valuation in the funding round was not disclosed.
August works with large financial institutions, such as hedge funds and family offices that are looking for yields and returns on their crypto investments, through lending, borrowing, and trading. Aya Kantorovich, co-CEO of August, told Fortune that the company’s goal is to be the first place institutional investors go.
While August works with 70 DeFi protocols—sets of rules and smart contracts that help traders conduct transactions without a centralized entity like a bank—and 13 blockchains, Kantorovich wants to eliminate the confusion that comes with deciding which one to use. “When you think about institutions, you want to get rid of this idea of or abstract away both chains and protocols. You just want to have one place,” she said.
August seeks to connect clients with DeFi networks that lend crypto and offer derivative and token trading, including Aave, Morpho, and Uniswap. It also aims to help clients monitor all of their positions from a single dashboard.
That makes Kantorovich’s company a middleman of sorts. However, she says that because August has access to clients’ positions the company can let clients pay for their loans, derivative positions, and trades all at once instead of putting money down for each individual position.
August produces most of its revenue through trading spreads—money made off the difference between the price a token is bought at and the price it is sold at—and also charges its clients trading fees on each transaction. Kantorovich declined to disclose the company’s annual revenue.
August is not the only crypto-focused prime brokerage. Coinbase has a division that caters specifically to large institutional clients known as Coinbase Prime. FalconX is another well-known brokerage in the space.
August will use the money from its latest fundraising to build out its marketing strategy, hire more employees, and continue developing new technology. The company previously raised $6 million in a seed round in 2023.
