OpenTrade raised $17M to expand its stablecoin yield infrastructure as global stablecoin supply surpasses $302B.
Crypto News
London-based crypto startup OpenTrade raised $17 million in a strategic funding round on May 6, bringing its total capital raised to more than $30 million. Mercury Fund and Notion Capital led the round, with additional participation from a16z Crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global. OpenTrade provides institutional-grade on-chain and real-world asset (RWA)-backed lending alongside stablecoin yield products.
The company said the new capital will fund the expansion of both its permissioned and permissionless yield infrastructure. It also plans to grow its asset management and trading team, increase engineering capacity, and establish a dedicated customer success function.
Curation+ Vault Framework Targets Fintechs and Neobanks
One key product targeted for expansion is Curation+, a vault curation framework that structures yield strategies across real-world and on-chain assets. The framework is designed for fintechs, neobanks, treasuries, and asset issuers. Curation+ applies regulated asset management oversight to portfolio construction, spanning both real-world instruments and on-chain assets rather than focusing on protocol selection alone.
OpenTrade's permissionless infrastructure allows asset issuers to access decentralized distribution channels through position-tracking tokens without requiring proprietary infrastructure. That system is currently live through Sierra Protocol, where the SIERRA liquid yield token draws on vaults containing money market funds, commercial paper, and trade finance assets.
OpenTrade surpassed $200 million in total value locked (TVL) in 2025 and processed more than $250 million in transaction volume that same year. The company projects transaction volume will exceed $1 billion by the end of 2026.
Raise Comes Amid US Stablecoin Regulation Debate
The fundraise comes as US lawmakers debate the CLARITY Act, a digital asset market structure bill that includes provisions on stablecoin yield. A compromise is nearing a Senate Banking Committee vote and would permit usage-based rewards such as cashback on stablecoin activity, while prohibiting yield on idle balances. OpenTrade CEO David Sutter said the company’s structure is modeled on securities lending in traditional finance and may face market-specific regulatory nuances depending on how the final legislation reads.
Sutter said the company's legal architecture was built to serve clients globally while remaining compliant with both traditional finance and digital asset regulatory standards. He added that regulatory momentum in the industry creates favorable conditions for continued stablecoin growth.
Founded in 2023, OpenTrade routes deposits into tokenized vaults that allocate capital across fixed-income instruments and selected decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies. The latest round follows a $7 million raise in June 2025 and a $4 million seed round in November 2024. Circle Ventures and Polygon Ventures backed the company in a May 2023 round. Co-founders David Sutter and Jeff Handler previously worked at Centre, the now-dissolved consortium of Circle and Coinbase that governed the USDC stablecoin standard. The global stablecoin supply currently exceeds $302 billion, with Tether's USDT representing approximately $189.5 billion and Circle's USDC accounting for roughly $79 billion.
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