Fintech Provider Portal Raises $34M Seed Round for Bitcoin-Based Decentralized Exchange

Portal, a San Francisco-based fintech provider, raised $34 million to support the development of its bitcoin-based decentralized exchange (DEX), which exited stealth mode on Tuesday.

Investors in the round included Coinbase Ventures, Arrington Capital, OKX Ventures and Gate.io, according to an announcement. Portal will also use the funding to advance the development of a non-custodial wallet.

Portal aims to offer a decentralized infrastructure for peer-to-peer swapping of bitcoin (BTC) across different blockchains without the need for intermediaries such as wrappers, bridges or centralized exchanges (CEX), which heighten the risk of hacks.

“As a staking and swapping layer, interoperability layer and execution layer, Portal’s infrastructure will enable any user to swap bitcoin across a range of blockchains and back in seconds without giving up custody, privacy or security,” Portal said.

The healthy size of the funding round is an indicator both of the brightening prospects for raising capital in the crypto industry after a tough couple of years and the growing interest in the use of bitcoin in the decentralized finance (DeFi) world, which is otherwise dominated by altcoins like ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL).