TRM Labs raises $4.2 million from Initialized Capital, PayPal Ventures, Blockchain Capital, and Y Combinator

San Francisco - TRM, the cryptocurrency risk management platform, today announced that it has secured $4.2 million in funding from Initialized Capital, Blockchain Capital, PayPal Ventures, and Y Combinator, bringing the total raised in its seed round to $5.9 million.

"At TRM, we are fueled by a fundamental belief that cryptocurrency and blockchain can democratize access to financial services and empower billions of people," said Esteban Castaño, co-founder and CEO of TRM Labs. "By building solutions to prevent cryptocurrency fraud and financial crime, we enable this vision and build a safer financial system for billions of people."

The growth of cryptocurrencies is a global phenomenon and brings both opportunities and new risks to financial institutions. TRM is accelerating the safe adoption of crypto assets with its platform designed to help financial institutions monitor and mitigate these risks at scale. Financial institutions use TRM to risk-score their cryptocurrency-related transactions, customers, or partnerships, helping them to simplify customer due diligence and meet regulatory requirements.

TRM integrates with more than a dozen blockchains, and analyzes billions of virtual asset transactions to detect signs of fraud and financial crime like money laundering in real-time. TRM launched out of the startup accelerator Y Combinator this summer. Since then, it has delivered its cryptocurrency compliance and risk management solutions to global financial institutions including major banks, brokerages, and exchanges across US, Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

"PayPal has been trusted by consumers for over 20 years because of its emphasis on fraud prevention and risk management," said Rahul Raina, co-founder and CTO of TRM Labs. "Their strategic investment in TRM signals their continued commitment to ensuring safety and compliance as the digital payments landscape evolves and innovates."

Initialized Capital, early investors in Coinbase and Digit, also participated in this fundraise. "Illicit activity is an existential problem for crypto since it impacts the willingness of financial institutions, regulators, and consumers to embrace crypto," said Garry Tan, co-founder and managing partner of Initialized. "We can't imagine more mission-oriented founders who can bridge the worlds of traditional finance, compliance, and crypto to tackle this critical problem."

The new funding will be used to grow TRM's engineering and data science teams, expand into new markets, and accelerate product development.

Spencer Bogart, General Partner at Blockchain Capital, said that the company's solution is desperately needed by financial institutions. "TRM provides a solution that every financial institution needs today because they are either establishing plans to directly engage with crypto or because they inevitably have customers or partnerships that are in some way exposed to cryptocurrency transactions."

About TRM

Founded in 2018, TRM helps financial institutions to measure, monitor, and mitigate their cryptocurrency risk exposure so they can safely embrace cryptocurrency-related transactions, products, and partnerships. TRM's risk management platform includes solutions for cryptocurrency KYC/AML, entity risk scoring, transaction monitoring, threat intelligence, and wallet screening. Financial institutions use TRM to monitor and mitigate their direct and indirect risk exposure to cryptocurrencies. For instance, a global bank may use TRM to detect whether customers are depositing funds sourced from virtual currency linked to illicit activity. A payment company may use TRM to monitor the risk of its cryptocurrency-related partnerships. TRM is based in San Francisco, CA and hiring across engineering, product, sales, and data science.