Sean Bennett (CTO) and Tammy Camp (CEO) of Stronghold

Hey traders, big announcement!

The last few months have been extremely busy for Stronghold, and we have some exciting news to share with you about Stronghold’s future.

Today, we announced that we raised $3.3 million in seed funding led by Dave Samuel, founding general partner at Freestyle Capital. This makes Stronghold the first Silicon Valley venture-backed fintech startup on distributed ledger technology!

Our trading platform is built on the super fast Stellar network, letting us take advantage of near-instant transactions with nominal fees.

We’ll use this funding on three major fronts for Stronghold’s development.

1. Creating an amazing trading experience

First and foremost, this investment will fuel the continued growth and development of our platform.

We have a current user base of over 20,000 traders with a growing over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk for cryptocurrencies. We’re committed to developing the best full-service platform possible for both retail traders and OTC clients.

For Stronghold, that means more features, flexibility, and a simple, safe trading experience. In fact, we have been busy expanding our team of developers so we can integrate new features and updates.

2. Growing the Stellar network

We’re dedicating a portion of this funding to adding more assets and liquidity onto Stellar’s network through our platform.

Stellar connects banks, payments systems and people, enabling them to move money quickly, reliably, and at almost no cost. Our goals and ideals definitely match. The funding will help us add more assets and liquidity to Stellar’s network, as well as expand our access to support a wider range of transactions.

Currently, we represent Bitcoin, Ethereum and Lumens, and we have many more currencies on the way. Not just a trading platform, Stronghold is developing into a full-service payment company for global transactions.

Like Stellar, we want to make sending money as easy as sending an email. Banking for the underbanked. We’re happy for the opportunity to contribute to Stellar’s growth.

3. Building a better asset management platform

The third focus is to develop our cryptocurrency asset management platform further. We want to give asset managers more flexibility while maintaining custody on behalf of their clients.

“Stronghold is committed to building something bigger than another fast-growth crypto exchange, which excited us at Freestyle,” said Dave Samuel. “They can help add tremendous volume and liquidity to the world’s financial ecosystem by providing globally-connected asset trading and management capabilities to today’s investment advisors.”

While the digital asset industry has seen explosive growth over the last few years, there is still a glaring lack of tools for institutions and asset managers to get involved in the space.

Stronghold is looking to change that. In the words of our CEO, Tammy Camp:

“We look forward to putting this funding to work to build a new financial ecosystem where institutions can seamlessly trade and manage assets on behalf of their clients.”

We are incredibly grateful to Dave and the Freestyle Capital team for believing in Stronghold. We also want to thank Stronghold’s full investor base of top-tier institutional seed firms, crypto specialists, and leading angel investors for their support, including: Hack VC, Precursor Ventures, Neural Capital, Array Ventures, Cantos Ventures, Randy Reddig (founding team of Square), Dan Macklin (founder of So-Fi), Vinny Lingham (founder of Civic), Rick Marini (founder of Protocol Ventures), Jake Gibson (founder of Nerdwallet), and Matt Mickiewicz (co-founder of Hired).

We’re excited about the future and grateful for our community of traders who are along for the ride with us.

Onward and upward!

Tammy Camp, CEO and co-founder

Sean Bennett, CTO and co-founder

P.S. — We are currently hiring in our San Francisco and New Zealand offices. If you are interested in blockchain and working with cutting-edge technology, click here to check out our open positions.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter (@strongholdxchg) to get all our latest updates. We have more game-changing announcements to share over the next few weeks.

Please get in touch with any questions, comments, or concerns.