London-based OpenTrade, a platform providing stablecoin yield infrastructure, raised $17 million in a strategic funding round to expand its real-world asset (RWA) backed investment products, bringing its total capital raised to more than $30 million.
"Demand for safe, scalable, stablecoin yield is outpacing what the vast majority of teams can realistically build and manage themselves,” Samantha Lewis, Partner at Mercury, said. “OpenTrade abstracts away all complexity associated with the technology, risk management, and execution."
The funding round, co-led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital with participation from a16z Crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global, follows a period of significant growth. OpenTrade surpassed $200 million in total value locked in April and processed over $250 million in transactions during 2025. The firm has already handled $300 million in volume in the first four months of 2026 and projects it will cross $1 billion for the full year, according to company statements.
The investment will be used to expand OpenTrade’s two main offerings: a permissionless protocol that allows asset issuers to access decentralized distribution, and Curation+, an institutional-grade vault curation service. This positions OpenTrade to capture a larger share of the growing on-chain yield market, which is increasingly attracting institutional clients seeking compliant, managed exposure to RWA-backed returns without building in-house infrastructure.
OpenTrade has expanded from its initial plug-and-play model to a multi-pillar infrastructure provider. The Curation+ service offers institutional-grade portfolio design and combines regulated asset management oversight with active strategy execution. This framework is designed to meet the risk-management standards of corporate treasuries and other institutional allocators.
The company's other new pillar is a permissionless protocol layer that issues transferable, position-tracking tokens. The first implementation is live through Sierra Protocol, whose SIERRA liquid yield token is backed by vault strategies combining RWAs like money market funds and commercial paper with on-chain strategies managed through OpenTrade.
The funding arrives as the global stablecoin market capitalization exceeds $300 billion, up from less than $30 billion in 2020. OpenTrade aims to bridge traditional finance assets with digital distribution, providing fintech partners like Littio and Midas Kripto the ability to offer dollar and euro-denominated yields.
OpenTrade was founded by David Sutter and Jeff Handler, who previously worked at Centre, the former consortium from Circle and Coinbase that managed governance for the USDC stablecoin. The new funding will support the growth of OpenTrade's engineering, asset management, and customer success teams.
"Starting from yield, OpenTrade has a unique opportunity to own the stablecoin infrastructure layer,” Notion Capital General Partner Itxaso del Palacio said. “The infrastructure gaps that matter most, including compliance and orchestration, treasury and liquidity management, and cross-border B2B payments, remain wide open, and OpenTrade is positioned to own them."
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
