Vauld is a Singapore and Bengaluru-based start-up that provides services related to cryptocurrencies. The start-up is a Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and lending platform based on cryptocurrencies and most recently it has announced to have raised USD 2 million or INR 14.7 Crore funding in a round led by a clutch of different investors.
The financing round was led by Coinbase Ventures, LuneX Ventures, Gumi Cryptos, Pantera Capital and CMT Digital, according to a report by VCCircle. The funding round also saw participation from company’s existing investors Robot Ventures, Better Capital, Jesus Rodrigues from IntoTheBlock, New Form Capital and CoinShares.
Vauld was previously known as ‘Bank of Hodlers’ and it operates by lending, borrowing and trading cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Tether, Ethereum among others. The start-up was founded by Sanju Sony Kurian and Darshan Bathija who aim to make cryptocurrency, a preferred financial instrument for banks and banking services. They also look forward to making cryptocurrency easier to use through their platform and make it interoperable with the present banking infrastructure in India, says Paul Veradittakit, partner at Pantera Capital.
The cryptocurrency-based lending and DeFi company solves one monetary problem for India and almost every country out there which nobody talks about. They say that governments can fall or change their policies with regard to currency and money. Your currency today might have zero value tomorrow and there is nothing that we can do about it.
Vauld takes the example of India’s demonetisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi which was undertaken overnight to break the chain of black money in the country. 500 and 1000 rupee notes were demonetised and people had to wait in lines to get fresh cash from the ATMs, deposit the old notes in the banks in exchange for new ones.
Critics, analysts and even the Indian citizens say that it was a very sudden announcement made by the government and the execution of the plan in terms of fresh cash distribution and collection of old notes was very poorly conducted.
Other countries including Argentina, Zimbabwe and Venezuela have also faced similar monetary and currency-related issues.
Vauld is also looking forward to entering into holistic Decentralised Finance segment that will offer services like trading, credit and payments to its customers.
However, in March, the Supreme Court of India induced a ban on crypto-based transactions by the Reserve Bank of India and since then there has been a severe downfall in exchange volumes and trading in this space.
