Crypto market intelligence firm Messari raises $21M in Series A

Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital and Kraken Ventures were among the investors to back Messari’s funding round

Crypto data analytics platform Messari announced yesterday it had completed a Series A funding round in which it raised $21 million. The round was led by Point72 Ventures and saw the participation of previous investors Underscore VC, Uncork Capital and Coinbase Ventures.

The market intelligence company plans to use the new funding to grow its research and engineering teams and offer more products, as well as globally expanding its existing Pro and Enterprise product suites.

Messari’s CEO Ryan Selkis explained, “Thousands of investors, crypto enterprises, and token projects already rely on our products and services to conduct industry diligence and participate in the emerging crypto economy. This new funding reinforces the value we have created for our early crypto-native customers and highlights the opportunity we have to solve some of crypto's most challenging information and compliance problems for new institutional entrants as well.”

Selkis previously led the restructuring of CoinDesk and managed the seed investing activity of Digital Currency Group before co-founding Messari three years ago. The Messari board of directors now includes Point72 Ventures partner Adam Carson.

He commented, “While investor participation in the crypto industry has grown exponentially over the past three years, current crypto research and analysis tools are still lacking the sophisticated signals and data that more advanced investors need. Messari is filling that much-needed space, creating a central access point for reliable information for the entire crypto ecosystem.”

Messari’s market intelligence products are already used by industry leaders such as Chainalysis, Coinbase, BlockTower and Gemini. Crypto’s growth in popularity over the last year has also led decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) and institutional investors to take advantage of Messari’s research, data and compliance products.

The Series A was also backed by new investors such as Winklevoss Capital, Kraken Ventures, Alameda Capital and Gemini Frontier Fund, as well as angel investors including Anchorage Co-founder Diogo Monica and Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer.

The investment will help fund Messari’s annual Mainnet 2021 summit and the development of its community research and educational content. It will also allow Messari to expand its crypto enterprise offerings, such as its new crypto asset research tool, the Messari Asset Coverage Support (MACS) product.