Stablecoin Agora raised $12 million in seed funding, reports Bloomberg.
The venture firm Dragonfly led the round, which saw additional support from General Catalyst and Robot Ventures.
Agora intends to launch a USD-pegged stablecoin backed by cash, Treasury bills from the United States and overnight repurchase agreements, and forge relationships with exchanges and other crypto firms. The firm will, for now, center on non-U.S. customers.
Nick Van Eck, son of investment firm VanEck CEO Jan Van Eck, co-founded Agora. VanEck will manage the funds in Agora’s reserves, Bloomberg adds.
Agora faces strong competitors in the USD-pegged stablecoin market. Tether’s 
USDT
-0.044%
takes 55.34% of the total Ethereum stablecoin supply, while Circle’s 
USDC
-0.035%
comprises 30.61% of it, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.
VanEck’s spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund HODL saw immense interest after its approval on Jan. 11, even seeing a 1,000% increase in volume in early February, The Block previously reported. On April 1, HODL brought in $22.82 million in USD volume.
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About Author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.