Crypto Bank Sygnum Achieves Unicorn Status with $1 Billion Valuation

The crypto bank Sygnum recently raised $58 million and reached a valuation above $1 billion, hitting unicorn status.

According to Reuters, Sygnum, with headquarters in Singapore and Zurich, expects to expand to more regions in Europe, launch in Hong Kong, and develop its infrastructure. The company has been growing and expanding recently, having registered in Liechtenstein in September and raising $40 million last year.

The new funding round involved new and current investors, the company’s employees, and the firm Fulgur Ventures—a bitcoin-focused venture.

Sygnum—established in 2018—offers its customers multiple services such as custody solutions for digital assets, and trading and tokenization services.

According to Fortune, Sygnum holds digital assets like Bitcoin instead of fiat currencies like U.S. dollars for its customers, a strategy that even traditional banks are starting to replicate.

“We’re not a traditional bank coming from the fiat world. We are looking at the market from the digital asset space and then integrating it to traditional banking,” said Mathias Imbach, Sygnum co-founder and CEO, to Fortune.

While the new successful deal is related to recent developments in the United States—Bitcoin surpassed the 100,000 milestone a few weeks after Donald Trump won the presidential elections and hours after he announced Paul Atkins, an advocate for cryptocurrency adoption, as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission—, the crypto bank does not intend to expand to America at the moment.

“Sygnum has focused on its home markets in Europe and Asia and has no current plans to enter the U.S. market with our own entities,” said Imbach to Reuters. “The U.S. developments for positive crypto market reform are, however, highly encouraging … Sygnum is exploring other options to benefit from this trend and will update the market once these are sufficiently developed, for example, partnerships and M&A.”