Crypto: Taurus breaks the bank

With the market downturn, crypto companies are finding it very hard to attract investors. Except for a few like... Taurus.

The Swiss company, which offers crypto services to financial institutions, has just raised $65 million in a Series B round. And not from just anyone, since the main investors are major banks: Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group and Arab Bank Switzerland.

With this round of funding, Taurus, which already raised $10m in 2020 (Series A), aims to accelerate its development in Switzerland (read our report) and abroad.

"We will continue to recruit engineers and get closer to our customers by opening offices in Europe. The first office will be in Paris," says co-founder Lamine Brahimi.

Created in 2018 by former bankers, Taurus, which now employs around 60 people, has quickly made a name for itself with financial institutions looking to put a foot - or more - in the crypto ocean. The company offers trading, custody and tokenisation services.

It now works with just over 25 financial institutions located in eight countries and on three continents. "Our aim is to continue to bring traditional finance on board," advances Lamine Brahimi.

In Switzerland, Taurus works with Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Pictet, Swissquote and Vontobel. In France, the company provides its infrastructure to CACEIS (a subsidiary of Crédit Agricole) and Delubac, the only bank that is registered as a digital asset service provider (PSAN) with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). "We will soon be signing with two major French clients," breathes Lamine Brahimi.

Taurus has also been involved in around 15 tokenisation transactions in recent months with issuers based in Switzerland and the EU, including banks and asset managers, as well as SMEs and start-ups. This fast-growing practice, which involves digitising real-world assets, has benefited from clearer regulation in recent months... and that could benefit Taurus.

"We are convinced that private markets are going to be tokenised: shares in unlisted companies, debt, anything that is not listed on the stock markets," says Lamine Brahimi.

The Swiss company is not the only one to want to position itself on this burgeoning market. This is particularly true of Fireblocks, which is working with other giants such as BNP Paribas and Société Générale.

The Israeli company raised $550 million at the beginning of 2022 for a valuation of $8 billion (Taurus' valuation has not been disclosed). The big difference is that Fireblocks only does cryptos and Taurus is regulated by Finma, the Swiss equivalent of the AMF.

"We are the only Tech company to have made the proactive choice to be regulated, it's a great guarantee of credibility for our customers," insists Lamine Brahimi.