- With the completion of a $1.4 million strategic investment round, Hinkal has raised $70 million for the cryptocurrency firm.
- The investment fund SALT, led by Anthony Scaramucci’s son AJ, spearheaded the capital round.
In a strategic investment round, Hinkal, a zero-knowledge (ZK) protocol that allows institutional investors to transact on-chain in private, has raised $1.4 million.
The capital round was spearheaded by SALT vehicle, an investment vehicle run by Anthony Scaramucci’s son AJ, Hinkal said on Friday. Peer VC, SNZ Capital, and Draper Associates were among the other investors.
Hinkal’s co-founder and CTO, Nika Koreli, said that the company raised the strategic round as a result of growing investor interest. According to Koreli, the round closed in two weeks after we got interest in March.
He continued by saying that Hinkal’s valuation increased to $70 million as a result of the round, which was set up as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) and token warrants.
Hinkal has added CEO of Kraken U.S., Tal Cohen, to its advisory board.
Hinkal enables institutional investors, including family offices, liquid funds, and venture capital funds, to conduct private on-chain trading. Its ZK protocol makes this possible by enabling users to employ self-custodial private wallet addresses for decentralized applications.
Hinkal is enabling this for cryptocurrency, bringing a new wave of primarily institutional customers that value this discretion on-chain, according to Koreli. In traditional finance, you can send, sell, or exchange without anyone observing you.
Know-your-business (KYB) verification is required by Hinkal for users in order to stop unauthorized use of the protocol. Hinkal has created an attestation layer, according to Koreli, which offers customers a selection of validation techniques. According to him, users have two options for confirming ownership: they can utilize decentralized identity (DID) services like Authento, ZkMe, and Galxe Passport, or they can use centralized exchange accounts like Coinbase or Binance.
Though Hinkal’s KYB verification procedure is similar to traditional banking, Koreli noted that it is different in that it permits users to activate reusable attestations. He contrasted this with traditional finance, where customers must submit to KYB checks in order to create an account.
According to Hinkal, the protocol only permits VCs and other users to liquidate vested tokens. “Traditional vesting models typically restrict the transfer of unvested tokens so they can’t be deposited to Hinkal,” Koreli stated, adding: “There are some exceptions with ‘liquid vesting’ that users can trade — we allow those to be deposited and liquidated.”
Hinkal addresses “critical pain points for institutional funds, founders and VCs by enabling private DeFi trading strategies and token liquidation without disrupting the broader market,” according to AJ Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SALT Fund, who called it a “groundbreaking protocol” in a statement.
According to Koreli, Hinkal supports all significant dapps and is operational on seven blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Polygon, and BNB Chain.
At the moment, Hinkal has about ten employees, and Koreli intends to keep the team structure minimal.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
