Crypto lender Maple Finance raises $5M, eyes Asia expansion

To propel its expansion eastward, Maple recently closed a $5 million strategic investment from a group of crypto-focused investors

Maple Finance, an on-chain, institutional credit marketplace that is aiming to fill a gap left behind by the failures of crypto lending giants such as BlockFi and Celsius, has its eyes set on Asia as financial centres such as Hong Kong and Singapore provide more regulatory clarity around digital assets.

Maple, which falls under the decentralized finance (DeFi) category, differs from centralized finance or CeFi platforms such as BlockFi in that it lets lenders see loan operations on the blockchain, promising to offer more transparency. Cumulatively, the three-year-old startup has issued $2.2 billion in loans, and presently it has nearly $50 million deposited on the platform.

To propel its expansion eastward, Maple recently closed a $5 million strategic investment from a group of crypto-focused investors. The round was led by BlockTower Capital and Tioga Capital, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Spartan Capital, GSR Ventures, and Veris Ventures, as well as past investors Maven 11 and Framework Ventures.

In Asia, you have regulatory clarity, or rather, regulatory support, both coming out of Hong Kong and Singapore in terms of new legislation that has come through, and you already have a very heavy trading focus over there, Sidney Powell, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Maple, told TechCrunch.

While Maple’s two dozen employees are spread mostly across Western Europe and North America, a number of its major borrowers have come from Hong Kong and Singapore.

A lot of the more bullish trading activity that takes place in terms of like Bitcoin price movement was largely led by trading activity that was coming out of the Asia time zone, based on the times that the trading was taking place, so I see a really big opportunity to get more active there on the ground, Powell stated, adding that Maple plans to add its first headcount in the region.