X10, a hybrid cryptocurrency exchange founded by a group of former Revolut executives, has raised $6.5m in funding to support its growth ambitions.
A 30 April statement from the exchange confirmed Tioga Capital, Semantic Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Starkware and Cyber fund as investors, as well as some unnamed Revolut executives and Konstantin Lomashuk, founder of Lido.
The company has taken a testnet product live and is encouraging interested traders to participate in the trial, confident in its offering’s ability to combine traditional DeFI exchange capabilities with the speed and features of a centralised exchange
Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, CEO and Founder of X10, said: “With X10, we want to give our users and traders the best of both worlds. Imagine the features and the speed of Coinbase or Binance but with full self-custody.
“The FTX situation, where users only got back a third of their funds, serves as a wake-up call for the industry. It urges us to reinforce trust and efficiency in crypto trading through on-chain trade settlement, validation, and self-custody.”
Fakhrutdinov is the former Head of Crypto Operations at Revolut, and founded X10 with fellow Revolut alumni. On its website, X10 adds that its team members have backgrounds at the likes of Goldmann Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Bitget and R3.
The London firm believes that there is opportunity for a combination of DeFi and CeFi approaches in cryptocurrency off the back of recent significant developments.
Notably, X10 points to the FTX collapse – which had a huge fallout in the global crypto sector and significantly affected consumer confidence in the market – as an example of the risks carried by CeFi-only platforms.
Such platforms have a risk of fund loss if bad actors control the exchange, the firm believes. It hopes to address this issue by combining CeFi with DeFi under a hybrid model, with better self-custody and on-chain trade settlement.
The firm’s launch and subsequent funding come during a global upsurge for cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin’s value peaking at well over $70,000 following the approval of the Spot ETF by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) late last year.
