Fireblocks Inc., a cryptocurrency custodial infrastructure firm, announced today that it has raised $500 million in new late-stage funding, valuing the company at $8 billion.

The company boasted that this round makes it the highest-valued digital asset infrastructure provider in the world as the Series E round quadrupled the company’s valuation since its Series D round in July. This funding brings total institutional investments in the company to $1 billion.

The funding round was co-led by D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital with participation from General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Mammoth, CapitalG, Altimeter, Iconiq Strategic Partners, Canapi Ventures and Parafi Growth Fund.

“Everything that’s happening at the cross-section of decentralized finance, nonfungible tokens, gaming, streaming and entertainment will be the biggest emerging use cases in the next year and a half,” said Michael Shaulov, co-founder and chief executive of Fireblocks. “People need to think about infrastructure that’s future-proof to layer more providers into the stack.”

Decentralized finance is the part of the cryptocurrency market that allows for peer-to-peer financial transactions using blockchain technology without the need for middlemen such as banks or traditional financial institutions. Nonfungible tokens are a type of crypto asset that can represent ownership of unique digital items such as artwork, game items, music, tickets and more.

Fireblocks said that 2021 was a banner year for the company, fueling growth from 150 customers to more than 800 customers. The firm also transferred and protected more than $2 trillion in assets. The company sees this as part of a global transformation where 55 of the world’s top 100 banks already have crypto and blockchain exposure.

Last year also proved to be explosive for the NFT and DeFi markets. In 2021, according to a newly released report from blockchain data company Chainalysis, the NFT market reached about $41 billion in traded value. Whereas DeFi protocols, which include NFTs, currently hold about $244 billion in locked-in value as of January this year, according to the tracker DeFiLlama.com, up from $26 billion at the beginning of 2021.

The company’s current service provides a full-service institutional network that delivers fast and secure blockchain settlement for assets and a wallet infrastructure that can be implemented by any company. That gives enterprise-class capabilities and data protection for assets, scalability and ease of use for financial institutions, retailers, gaming studios and other use cases.

“You want to be agile, and consider whether the platform you’re selecting offers the security, custody and control over assets that can apply to these use cases,” said Shaulov.

Last month, Fireblocks added self-service features providing a higher degree of control for Fireblocks capabilities and the company said that it intends to continue expanding these features. Some of these upcoming features include new user management controls, resetting two-factor authentication and whitelisting for IP addresses.

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