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Digital Asset lands $355M as a16z doubles down on Wall Street rails. 3 hours ago Digital Asset Holdings has secured a fresh $355 million financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm, signaling a growing appetite on Wall Street for permissioned blockchain infrastructure. The round also includes participation from 7RIDGE, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Citadel Securities and Optiver, valuing Digital Asset at roughly $2 billion, according to Bloomberg Law's reporting citing people familiar with the matter. The capital will be deployed to scale the Canton Network, Digital Asset's privacy-focused platform designed to enable institutions to tokenize and settle traditional securities while keeping commercially sensitive data protected. Canton has already been piloted by a slate of major financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered, Société Générale and Deutsche Börse. Bloomberg's reporting last month indicated Digital Asset had initially sought around $300 million at a similar valuation and expected to close the round within weeks. Co-founder and CEO Yuval Rooz summarized the journey in a post on X after the announcement: "We knew institutional adoption was the path. We failed. We made bad decisions... But we never let go of our North Star." Key takeaways. * Digital Asset raises $355 million at about a $2 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz's crypto arm, with 7RIDGE, ADIA, Citadel Securities and Optiver among participants. * The funds will accelerate Canton Network's expansion as a privacy-preserving, tokenization-and-settlement layer for traditional securities used by large financial institutions. * Today's round extends a multi-year funding trajectory, building on prior capital events in 2025 and 2021 that have reinforced Wall Street's backing for Digital Asset. * The ongoing investor support underscores a broader industry push toward institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure, though deployment timelines and regulatory clarity remain in focus. A new round, a maturing vision for Canton. Digital Asset's latest financing centers on the Canton Network, the company's distributed ledger framework intended to facilitate the private issuance, tokenization and settlement of traditional securities without exposing sensitive data to counterparties. By preserving privacy while enabling cross-institutional settlement, Canton aims to modernize aspects of the capital markets ecosystem that rely on high-security data handling and compliance controls. The round's participants reflect a convergence of traditional finance and crypto-native firms seeking durable, scalable infrastructure. Andreessen Horowitz's crypto affiliate led the funding with a$100 million allocation, while strategic contributors include 7RIDGE, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Citadel Securities and Optiver. The infusion values Digital Asset at approximately $2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Law report. "The path to real institutional adoption is clear," Rooz said in his post. "We have spent nearly a dozen years evolving from a DRW spin-out into a platform that can support real-world securities workflows with privacy baked in." The Canton Network has already attracted real-world pilots with several marquee banks and market operators, a testament to the architecture's potential to address regulatory and data-access concerns that have long constrained cross-border and multi-venue settlements. The ecosystem page for Canton highlights participation and collaboration across major financial players, illustrating a practical, industry-aligned roadmap rather than a niche crypto use case. Canton Network gains institutional traction. The collaboration slate for Canton underscores a trend: big financial institutions are increasingly willing to experiment with permissioned blockchains that promise data confidentiality alongside the efficiencies of tokenized settlement. Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered, Société Générale and Deutsche Börse have all piloted Canton's capabilities, marking a meaningful adoption signal for permissioned networks in capital markets. Observers have noted that the new funding aligns with the industry's broader move toward tokenized, regulated securities and the infrastructure required to support it. The round's scale and the caliber of backers suggest a longer-term commitment to building an interoperable, institutional-grade platform that can operate within existing compliance regimes while unlocking new liquidity and settlement efficiency. Meanwhile, Digital Asset's public communication about the financing emphasizes the importance of "institutional adoption" as a strategic North Star. The company has framed Canton not merely as a technology demonstration but as a practical highway for asset tokenization, secured collateralized lending, and structured outcomes that demand privacy and security at scale. The new funding will accelerate Canton's rollout and its network effects among banks, custodians, and other market participants. In parallel, the funding history paints a picture of sustained investor confidence in Digital Asset's approach. Earlier this year, Digital Asset disclosed a $135 million round led by DRW Venture Capital with participation from Tradeweb, Citadel Securities, IMC, Optiver, Goldman Sachs, Virtu and others, followed by a $50 million strategic round in December from BNY Mellon, Nasdaq, S&P Global and iCapital. These successive rounds reflect a coordinated, multi-faceted push from both traditional financial powerhouses and crypto-focused investors toward the Canton framework. A multi-year funding runway and strategic implications. Digital Asset's fundraising trajectory extends beyond the recent rounds. In 2021, the company raised more than $120 million from investors including 7RIDGE and Eldridge, following earlier investments from JPMorgan, Citi, Deutsche Börse, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Samsung and Salesforce. Taken together, the financing stack signals a deepened industry belief that permissioned, privacy-preserving blockchain networks can complement, or in some cases augment, existing post-trade infrastructure. For market participants, the implication is twofold. First, the backing by a broad coalition of Wall Street players could help catalyze broader adoption of Canton's platform, potentially lowering the cost and risk of tokenizing traditional assets. Second, as regulatory clarity evolves around tokenized securities, Canton's architecture - designed to keep transaction data private among counterparties - may address concerns about data exposure and compliance in cross-institution workflows. However, timing remains uncertain, and Digital Asset has not disclosed a definitive deployment schedule for a broad, live rollout beyond its existing pilots. Cointelegraph reached out to Digital Asset for comment but did not receive a reply by publication time. The company's leadership has publicly framed the current funding as a vindication of a long-term strategy, even amid earlier missteps, underscoring a commitment to the "North Star" of institutional-grade tokenization. What to watch next: as Canton scales, market observers will be watching for concrete evidence of scalable tokenized securities settlement within regulated frameworks, concrete client wins, and a clearer regulatory path that could accelerate or delay the network's expansion. The coming quarters should reveal whether Canton can translate pilots into durable, revenue-generating services for the traditional financial system. Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. 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Digital Asset Holdings has raised $355 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz's a16z crypto fund, which contributed $100 million. Other participants include 7RIDGE, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Citadel Securities and Optiver. The blockchain builder created the Canton Network, a public blockchain enabling users to keep certain information private. This feature is designed to make it suitable for mainstream financial transactions as Wall Street increasingly explores using blockchain technology for handling traditional assets. The funding reflects growing institutional interest in applying cryptocurrency's underlying technology to conventional financial markets.

Electronic trading firm Optiver is hiring from banks and hedge funds. 11 minutes ago Electronic trading firm Optiver has had a meteoric rise, doubling its headcount to 2,233 over the past six years. There's only so much incumbent electronic trading talent to go around so, as it expands in the US, it has taken to hiring from outside sources. Optiver hired Qian Zhao this month in New York as a quant researcher in its credit trading team. She spent the last four and a half years as US head of applied AI for machine learning quants at Goldman Sachs. Zhao also spent three years at JPMorgan; her tenure overlapped with Optiver's head of credit trading, Andreas 'AK' Koukorinis, who was an MD in systematic market making for JPMorgan before a brief stint at crypto trading firm GSR. Optiver, which has a strong presence in Chicago, moved into a new 23,000 square foot Manhattan office last October. It's home to several marquee hires from the past year, including CTO Lance Braunstein, and Andrew Arnold, who heads the firm's New York AI Lab. The firm is also hiring in London. This month it hired Antish Manna as a trading analytics lead after a nine year stint at hedge fund Man Group. There, he was a principal quant and head of execution analytics in its multi-strategy division. The growth isn't stopping for Optiver in 2026, which currently has 158 open listings including internships. 12 of those are in New York, each offering a flat salary of $200k. Optiver did not respond to a request for comment. Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you'd like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email [email protected]. Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate. The essential daily roundup of news and analysis read by everyone from senior bankers and traders to new recruits. Boost your career. Find thousands of job opportunities by signing up to eFinancialCareers today. Top Articles