Institutional Crypto Wallet Startup Raises $6.5 Million, ‘Eliminates Private Keys’

Curv, a digital asset startup headquartered in the United States, has raised $6.5 million to launch a cloud-based digital asset wallet for financial institutions that does not use private keys, a company press release published on Feb. 26 reveals.

According to the statement, the seed round was led by digital asset investment company Digital Currency Group and Israeli cybersecurity company Team8. The round also included participation from Monex Group, Flybridge Capital, Jump Capital and Liberty City Ventures.

The funds will reportedly be used to create an institutional digital wallet that allows institutions and enterprises to securely use digital assets and blockchain applications.

Curv claims to “eradicate the concept of private keys” and introduce new type of cryptography that would deliver a simpler way to secure and sign transactions. As explained in press release, the digital asset wallet will use multi-party computation protocols — a subfield of cryptography that develops methods allowing parties to jointly compute a function over their inputs without disclosing theirs amounts.

Moreover, the need to use cold and hot wallets will be replaced by what the firm refers to as a software-only, cloud-based service.

In an interview with business magazine Fortune today, Curv’s CEO, Itay Malinger, claimed that the technology to be a “breakthrough”:

“Five years ago it would have taken a long time and lots of network traffic to do this. The breakthrough is that the math can be brought down to a sub-second calculation. That means it’s possible to do something through a cloud deployment.”

Crypto companies have recently developed several crypto solutions for institutional investors following a growing demand from corporate clients. For instance, cryptocurrency exchange Seed CX — a Chicago-based licensed platform targeting institutional clients — launched a digital asset wallet solution with on-chain settlement.

Cryptocurrency hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger is also developing its own institutional custody offering, dubbed Ledger Vault. The company has lately expanded to New York as part of developing the solution.

Meanwhile, the apparent asset management debacle of now defunct crypto exchange QuadrigaCX continues to unfold, allegedly due to what Curv refers to as the “single point of failure associated with the private keys.”