Summary
- Trace Finance secured $32 million in a Series A funding round, primarily led by CoinFund, with additional support from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, and others.
- This investment coincides with Brazil's new classification of cross-border cryptocurrency transactions as foreign-exchange activities, which is directing institutional investments toward regulated entities like Trace.
- The company intends to utilize the capital to broaden its reach beyond the U.S.-Brazil corridor into other Latin American regions, the U.S., and Asia-Pacific.
Trace Finance, a firm that provides financial infrastructure linking Brazilian and U.S. banks to stablecoin settlement networks, announced on Wednesday that it has completed a $32 million Series A funding round led by CoinFund, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Capital, and several other cryptocurrency-focused investors.
This funding arrives as Brazilian authorities have redefined cross-border cryptocurrency transactions as foreign-exchange operations, a move that is shifting institutional capital from unregulated crypto platforms to licensed, bank-grade intermediaries, which is the area where Trace operates.
Based in New York, Trace Finance claims to have facilitated over $10 billion in cross-border transaction volume and has become a key settlement partner for numerous significant global payment companies in Latin America, including dLocal, a payment firm based in Uruguay.
Co-founder and CEO of Trace, Bernardo Brites, stated that the company's approach focuses on integrating stablecoins with traditional banking compliance rather than viewing digital currencies as substitutes for regulated systems.
"Stablecoins alone do not solve cross-border payments. Stablecoins plus regulated local bank infrastructure does," Brites emphasized. "This funding will enable us to enhance the banking, payments, and compliance frameworks that global fintechs, exchanges, international banks, and enterprises depend on to connect digital settlements with reliable local financial systems.”
Brites noted that the new funds will facilitate the company's expansion beyond its initial corridor between the U.S. and Brazil into other Latin American markets, as well as into the U.S. and Asia-Pacific regions.
This funding round also attracted strategic investors such as Chainlink Labs and notable individuals from the crypto space, including Circle co-founder Sean Neville, Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, and Ricardo Villela Marino, vice chairman of Itaú Unibanco, the largest bank in Latin America.
According to CoinFund Partner Einar Braathen, "The next phase of global money movement will be won by companies that can bridge on-chain settlement with trusted local banking systems. Brazil is one of the largest and most operationally complex payment environments in the world, and Trace has built the regulated infrastructure that global blue-chip businesses are using to scale, while saving time and costs compared to legacy alternatives."
Previously, Trace Finance raised funds in a seed round in 2022, which was led by HOF Capital. The company is now working on developing additional settlement products to strengthen its banking relationships across Brazil and the wider region.