Rails, a decentralized crypto exchange, has raised $6.2 million in attempts to fill the void FTX left behind after crashing in 2022, the startup’s co-founder and CEO Satraj Bambra exclusively told TechCrunch.
The crypto community is watching Rails because it’s attempting to straddle the divide in crypto exchanges by building out both centralized and decentralized underlying technology.
The capital is earmarked for engineering team hiring and expanding its licensing and regulatory strategy to make the exchange “fully compliant,” Bambra said.
That centralized computing was something Rails saw with FTX as “being really, really good,” but when it came to decentralized exchanges like dYdX that exist today it wasn’t as solid, Bambra thinks.
But being a hybrid of decentralized and centralized is better than being fully one side or another, he added.
Milewski and Schwartz bootstrapped Zūm Rails, building it up to a team of 30 people.
“We reached the point where we realize that bootstrapping is no longer healthy for our business,” Schwartz told TechCrunch.
In addition, Zūm Rails is working on a FedNow offering in the U.S. that will enable businesses to send and receive FDIC-insured payments within seconds.
Zūm Rails’ performance to date “is really impressive,” Jake Olson, vice president at Arthur Ventures, told TechCrunch.
Any organization that views the streamline digital financial interaction coupled with the instant payments capability as a competitive advantage will be a great fit for Zūm Rails.”
The idea “originated out of his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system,” according to his biographer Ashlee Vance.
And the news of its demise broke less than two weeks after the Biden administration announced $6 billion in funding for high-speed rail projects across California.
It’s a big win for public transit advocates, many of whom have spent decades stumping for not just high-speed rail, but better rail service overall.
Thankfully this country was already building momentum back up for investing in its rail system, with a focus on faster trains.
Brightline is also building what it calls “the nation’s first true high-speed rail network” between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Silicon Valley Bank was an influential payment provider for many smaller companies, which put the bank in a highly vulnerable position when it collapsed in late 2018. This collapse spotlighted…
