CEO Touts Stablecoin Yield Momentum as OpenTrade Secures $17M Funding
With a fresh $17 million funding injection, OpenTrade is advancing its stablecoin yield infrastructure, pushing the company's cumulative capital raised beyond the $30 million threshold as it serves institutional clients worldwide.
An institutional-grade platform specializing in onchain and real-world asset (RWA)-backed lending alongside stablecoin yield offerings, OpenTrade has successfully obtained new capital to fuel the expansion of its yield infrastructure capabilities.
According to a Wednesday announcement obtained by Cointelegraph, the platform has successfully closed a $17 million strategic funding round with leadership from Mercury Fund and Notion Capital.
The newly acquired capital will be deployed to support OpenTrade's ongoing expansion of both its permissioned and permissionless yield infrastructure systems, alongside accelerating the development of Curation+, its vault-focused service offering, CEO David Sutter informed Cointelegraph.
"The company also plans to expand its asset management and trading team, increase engineering capacity, and build a dedicated customer success function to support its growing client base," Sutter said.
CEO positive on regulation amid CLARITY Act debate over stablecoin rules
This capital raise arrives at a time when United States legislators are engaged in deliberations regarding how rewards on stablecoins should fall under regulatory frameworks within the CLARITY Act, a comprehensive digital asset market structure legislation that has experienced setbacks in part due to disagreements about whether cryptocurrency companies should have permission to provide interest-like incentives on stablecoin holdings. Sutter voiced optimism regarding recent developments surrounding the stalled legislative proposal.
The CLARITY Act is approaching a Senate Banking Committee vote following a negotiated compromise between cryptocurrency industry participants and banking sector stakeholders. Under the agreement's terms, usage-based rewards such as cashback incentives or discounts tied to stablecoin activity would be permitted, while yield generation on dormant balances would be banned.
"Our structure is derived from securities lending in traditional finance, but adapted to the lending of stablecoins instead of securities," Sutter said, adding that there may be market-specific nuances affecting availability to institutional or qualified investors.
In conversation with Cointelegraph, Sutter explained that the legal framework supporting the platform has been specifically designed to deliver its products to a global clientele while ensuring adherence to both existing traditional finance regulations and digital asset regulatory standards.
"There are strong regulatory tailwinds for the industry at large, which will be conducive to continued growth for stablecoins," Sutter added.
Circle Ventures was an early investor in OpenTrade
Established in 2023, OpenTrade aims to deliver scalable and regulatory-compliant yield products tailored for fintech companies and institutional investors.
The infrastructure developed by OpenTrade channels user deposits into tokenized vault structures that distribute capital across a diversified mix of yield-generating sources, with primary emphasis on RWAs including fixed-income instruments, complemented by carefully selected decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies. Individual vaults adhere to predefined allocation strategies and function through smart contract-based systems that oversee deposits, monitor positions and facilitate return distribution.
With the completion of this most recent funding round, OpenTrade's cumulative capital raised now stands at $30 million and featured participation from well-known industry investor a16z Crypto. The company, which maintains its headquarters in London, had previously completed a $7 million strategic funding round under the leadership of Mercury Fund and Notion Capital in June 2025, which came after securing $4 million during a seed round conducted in November 2024.
Additional funding was obtained by OpenTrade from investors including Circle Ventures and Polygon Ventures in May 2023, coinciding with the announcement of its intentions to introduce a platform facilitating USDC-denominated investments and tokenized financial assets.
Dave Sutter and Jeff Handler, who co-founded OpenTrade, both held positions at Centre, a consortium that has since been dissolved and was formed by Circle and Coinbase to establish standards governance for the USDC stablecoin.