Marcos Viriato, who was for years a partner at BTG and head of technology, and Alex Buelau, a Brazilian programmer who made his career in London at multinationals like Siemens - teamed up to found Parfin in 2019.
The two met in July of that year, when Marcos was spending a season in London.
"We saw that the financial market would eventually end up adopting crypto and using blockchain to tokenize assets," Marcos told Brazil Journal. "And Brazil was a market where nobody was doing this and with huge potential. The population is very large and likes technology, and the regulation is favorable as well."
Parfin already has three products being marketed.
The first is what it calls 'crypto as a service', which has B3 itself as a client.
Basically, its API has connected to 20 different exchanges, allowing any bank or brokerage firm to offer cryptocurrency trading within their platforms.
"Banks have the flexibility to choose which exchanges they want to trade with. Based on this, we will always take the best price from all the connected brokers and offer it to them," said Marcos.
The second product is a custody solution that allows brokerages, banks and institutional investors to keep cryptocurrencies purchased on exchanges in an external custodian - avoiding the risks of a situation like FTX's.
"If you deposit cryptocurrencies on an exchange, they send them to a centralized wallet where it gets all mixed up," said Alex, the startup's CTO. "With custody you segregate it, it's an extra layer of security."
The third product has just been launched: a private permissioned blockchain network, dubbed Parchain.
In simple terms, Parchain provides the infrastructure needed for companies to tokenize any type of asset, ensuring privacy and lower costs, Marcos said.
Today, when a company like Vortex tokenizes a debenture, for example, it typically uses a public blockchain.
The problem with this "is that on the public network anyone can see the transactions that are made, including its competitor. Also, the private network has a much lower cost because there is no cost per transaction," Alex said.
According to him, Partin's permissioned blockchain also guarantees interoperability with other private and public networks. That is: they will be able to send the tokens to other blockchain networks.
Parfin has about R$500 million of assets under custody, of which R$200 million comes from the crypto as a service and the rest from the tokenization part. The startup's remuneration is basically through fees.
Parfin's round comes at a time when the sea is not fit for fish in the crypto world - with the FTX case further bathing the entire industry in skepticism.
"Last year was a very difficult year and the FTX story could have really messed up the round," said Marcos. "But our investors were very confident in the technology, and in fact our solutions help mitigate cases like FTX's by giving greater diversification and risk control."
Marcos Viriato, who was for years a partner at BTG and head of technology, and Alex Buelau, a Brazilian programmer who made his career in London at multinationals like Siemens - teamed up to found Parfin in 2019.
The two met in July of that year, when Marcos was spending a season in London.
"We saw that the financial market would eventually end up adopting crypto and using blockchain to tokenize assets," Marcos told Brazil Journal. "And Brazil was a market where nobody was doing this and with huge potential. The population is very large and likes technology, and the regulation is favorable as well."
Parfin already has three products being marketed.
The first is what it calls 'crypto as a service', which has B3 itself as a client.
Basically, its API has connected to 20 different exchanges, allowing any bank or brokerage firm to offer cryptocurrency trading within their platforms.
"Banks have the flexibility to choose which exchanges they want to trade with. Based on this, we will always take the best price from all the connected brokers and offer it to them," said Marcos.
The second product is a custody solution that allows brokerages, banks and institutional investors to keep cryptocurrencies purchased on exchanges in an external custodian - avoiding the risks of a situation like FTX's.
"If you deposit cryptocurrencies on an exchange, they send them to a centralized wallet where it gets all mixed up," said Alex, the startup's CTO. "With custody you segregate it, it's an extra layer of security."
The third product has just been launched: a private permissioned blockchain network, dubbed Parchain.
In simple terms, Parchain provides the infrastructure needed for companies to tokenize any type of asset, ensuring privacy and lower costs, Marcos said.
Today, when a company like Vortex tokenizes a debenture, for example, it typically uses a public blockchain.
The problem with this "is that on the public network anyone can see the transactions that are made, including its competitor. Also, the private network has a much lower cost because there is no cost per transaction," Alex said.
According to him, Partin's permissioned blockchain also guarantees interoperability with other private and public networks. That is: they will be able to send the tokens to other blockchain networks.
Parfin has about R$500 million of assets under custody, of which R$200 million comes from the crypto as a service and the rest from the tokenization part. The startup's remuneration is basically through fees.
Parfin's round comes at a time when the sea is not fit for fish in the crypto world - with the FTX case further bathing the entire industry in skepticism.
"Last year was a very difficult year and the FTX story could have really messed up the round," said Marcos. "But our investors were very confident in the technology, and in fact our solutions help mitigate cases like FTX's by giving greater diversification and risk control."