Fidelity, Tenaya Capital Fund Crypto-Security Firm Fireblocks

Fireblocks, a platform for securing digital assets in transit, announced today $16 million in Series A funding from investment heavyweights including Cyberstarts, Tenaya Capital, and Eight Roads — the proprietary investment arm of Fidelity International. The additional capital will enable the company to build out its infrastructure, and court additional firms. Several influential customers like Galaxy Digital and Genesis Global Trading have already switched to Fireblocks to safeguard the transmission of their digital assets across exchanges, over the counter brokerages, hot wallets, and cold storage. Spurred to action following a series of high-profile hacks, founders Michael Shailov and Pavel Berengoltz aimed to eliminate the root cause of digital asset hacks and scams, i.e. private key theft, spoofing, and compromised credentials. Shailov told CoinDesk, he and his colleague from Lacoon Mobile Security — which was acquired by Check Point in April 2015 — “reprioritized” their target clients from “traditional financial infrastructure to crypto,” following the “clearly sophisticated hacking by true professionals, including nation states.