A company betting that stablecoins only work when bolted onto regulated banking has just pulled in fresh capital. Trace Finance, which connects banks in Brazil and the United States to stablecoin settlement networks, said Wednesday it had raised $32 million in a Series A round led by CoinFund. Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Capital and several other crypto-focused investors also joined the deal.
A Regulatory Shift Working in Its Favor
The timing is no accident. Brazilian regulators are reclassifying cross-border crypto transfers as foreign-exchange operations, and that change is steering institutional money away from unregulated crypto platforms toward licensed, bank-grade intermediaries. That is precisely the corner of the market Trace has built its business around.
$10 Billion Moved and Heavyweight Partners
The New York-based company says it has already processed more than $10 billion in cross-border transaction volume. It has also become a primary settlement partner for several major global payment firms operating across Latin America, among them the Uruguay-based payments company dLocal.
The Strategy: Stablecoins Plus Compliance
Bernardo Brites, Trace's co-founder and CEO, said the firm's approach rests on pairing stablecoins with traditional banking compliance, rather than treating digital currency as a replacement for regulated rails.
"Stablecoins alone do not solve cross-border payments. Stablecoins plus regulated local bank infrastructure does," Brites said in a statement. "This round lets us deepen the banking, payments, and compliance infrastructure that global fintechs, exchanges, international banks, and enterprises rely on to bridge digital settlement with trusted local financial systems."
He said the new money will help Trace move beyond its initial U.S.-Brazil corridor into other Latin American markets, as well as the United States and the Asia-Pacific region.
A Deep Bench of Backers
The round also brought in strategic investors including Chainlink Labs, plus individual backers with deep roots in the crypto industry. Those names include Circle co-founder Sean Neville and Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, alongside Ricardo Villela Marino, vice chairman of Itaú Unibanco, Latin America's largest bank.
"The next phase of global money movement will be won by companies that can bridge on-chain settlement with trusted local banking systems," CoinFund Partner Einar Braathen said in a statement. "Brazil is one of the largest and most operationally complex payment environments in the world, and Trace has built the regulated infrastructure that global blue-chip businesses are using to scale, while saving time and costs compared to legacy alternatives."
What Comes Next
Trace's last raise was a 2022 seed round led by HOF Capital. The company says it is now building additional settlement products designed to deepen its banking ties across Brazil and the wider region.
