이 기사 공유하기

Andreessen Horowitz Leads $5M Bet on Euro Stablecoin Startup Angle

Angle is looking to quell the dollar’s dominance in the stablecoin market.

작성자 Ian Allison
업데이트됨 2023년 5월 11일 오후 4:09 게시됨 2021년 9월 28일 오후 2:01 AI 번역
(Jeremy Bezanger/Unsplash)
(Jeremy Bezanger/Unsplash)

Angle Labs, a startup focused on offering stablecoins pegged to currencies like the euro as an alternative to dollar-centric tokens, has raised $5 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Also included in the seed round, announced Tuesday, were Fabric VC, Wintermute, Divergence Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Alven, Julien Bouteloup and Frédéric Montagnon.

STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Não perca outra história.Inscreva-se na Newsletter Crypto Daybook Americas hoje. Ver Todas as Newsletters

Angle’s euro stablecoin, which is underpinned by crypto-generating perpetual swaps, satisfies a pressing need across the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) universe, says Angle Labs core contributor Pablo Veyrat.

Because of the U.S. dollar’s depreciation in 2020, people from Europe have to make at least a 10% return on their USD-pegged stablecoins to make a profit in euros, Veyrat pointed out.

Publicidade

“I started working on the project in January while at Stanford and having fun with Compound getting some yield on USDC. But I’m based in France, and I realized that I was subject to [exchange] risk with my USDC,” said Veyrat in an interview.

The project’s agEUR stablecoin on Ethereum is currently on testnet, or being tested, while the mainnet code is being audited and is expected to go live by the end of next month.

The plan is also to launch a USD stablecoin using the protocol, and then to offer fiat stablecoins for other regions heavily involved in DeFi but underserved in terms of stablecoins, including the Swiss franc, the British pound, the Japanese yen or the Korean won.

Stablecoin race

A new generation of stablecoin developers are exploring alternatives to U.S. dollar-pegged coins that rely on dollars held one-to-one in a bank account, or capital-inefficient “algocoins” that require over-collateralization.

Stablecoins are emerging backed using derivatives techniques like perpetual swaps and delta-neutral positions (a hedging strategy that balances the degree to which an option is exposed to shifts in the price of the underlying asset). A recent example is the Solana-based UXD stablecoin protocol.

Read more: UXD Raises $3M to Bring Algorithmic Stablecoins to Solana

“We have an insurance fund because the protocol accumulates some surplus,” Veyrat said. “But we also have the people who lend money to us, to whom we can offer a higher yield. These people are our insurance fund. So from a stablecoin point of view, we are like UXD on steroids.”

Publicidade

Veyrat acknowledged that the size of a euro stablecoin market is a mere fraction of the billions worth of transactions denominated in USD stablecoins. But he expects further depreciation of the dollar going forward.

“It looks like the Biden administration is spending a lot of money,” Veyrat said. “So there’s going to be a lot of inflation in USD in the coming years, I feel.”

Being able to tackle the exchange risk between currencies raises the question of how such a protocol could help people in countries dogged by unstable currencies and hyperinflation.

“Obviously there’s a huge motivation to give financial access to people who are deprived of stable currencies, like in Zimbabwe or Venezuela,” said Veyrat, adding:

“But when it comes to people playing with DeFi, you need to talk to degens. When you’re launching your protocol, there is no success otherwise; DeFi only exists within itself for the moment.”

More For You

Exchange Review - March 2025

Exchange Review March 2025

CoinDesk Data's monthly Exchange Review captures the key developments within the cryptocurrency exchange market. The report includes analyses that relate to exchange volumes, crypto derivatives trading, market segmentation by fees, fiat trading, and more.

알아야 할 것:

Trading activity softened in March as market uncertainty grew amid escalating tariff tensions between the U.S. and global trading partners. Centralized exchanges recorded their lowest combined trading volume since October, declining 6.24% to $6.79tn. This marked the third consecutive monthly decline across both market segments, with spot trading volume falling 14.1% to $1.98tn and derivatives trading slipping 2.56% to $4.81tn.

  • Trading Volumes Decline for Third Consecutive Month: Combined spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized exchanges fell by 6.24% to $6.79tn in March 2025, reaching the lowest level since October. Both spot and derivatives markets recorded their third consecutive monthly decline, falling 14.1% and 2.56% to $1.98tn and $4.81tn respectively.
  • Institutional Crypto Trading Volume on CME Falls 23.5%: In March, total derivatives trading volume on the CME exchange fell by 23.5% to $175bn, the lowest monthly volume since October 2024. CME's market share among derivatives exchanges dropped from 4.63% to 3.64%, suggesting declining institutional interest amid current macroeconomic conditions. 
  • Bybit Spot Market Share Slides in March: Spot trading volume on Bybit fell by 52.1% to $81.1bn in March, coinciding with decreased trading activity following the hack of the exchange's cold wallets in February. Bybit's spot market share dropped from 7.35% to 4.10%, its lowest since July 2023.

More For You

Image overlay test seven

ETH's price chart. (TradingView/CoinDesk)

Dek: Image overlay test seven