Etherealize, a startup building infrastructure to help Wall Street adopt Ethereum, raised $40 million in a Series A round co‑led by Electric Capital and Paradigm. The financing builds on an earlier grant from Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, and signals a push to make Ethereum a core platform for institutional finance.
The company says proceeds will accelerate development of zero-knowledge privacy systems, on‑chain settlement engines and tools for tokenized fixed‑income markets. Co‑founder Danny Ryan—formerly of the Ethereum Foundation—called the initiative the “Institutional Merge,” describing it as an upgrade to safer, globally accessible rails for institutional finance.
Etherealize’s strategy mirrors recent moves by large financial players that are testing blockchain asset issuance and on‑chain settlement. Examples include BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund on Ethereum and JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform for real‑world asset tokenization and USD payments.
Why this matters: if successful, these building blocks could make Ethereum the unseen backbone for settlement and treasury functions at banks and asset managers. That would amplify demand for ETH-based settlement tools and related custody and compliance services.
Risk note: institutional deployments face regulatory scrutiny, integration hurdles with legacy systems and privacy trade‑offs. Timelines for adoption are uncertain and depend on regulators, standards bodies and market participants.
Source: GlobeNewswire. Read the original coverage for full details.