Sam Bankman-Fried bought his first startup. Now, Airwallex is betting million on his next - Forbes Australia
Australian fintech unicorn Airwallex is leading a $45 million seed round for Melbourne-based startup Metal, which aims to build a blockchain tailored for institutional use.
Loong Wang has returned to the cryptocurrency sector with a startup designed to solve the technical barriers preventing banks and institutions from adopting blockchain technology.
Metal, a Melbourne and San Francisco-based company, has raised over $45 million in a seed round led by Airwallex, the Australian fintech unicorn.
The funding round, which also included participation from Capital49, a venture firm established by Airwallex's co-founders, is intended to build the infrastructure necessary for a more efficient global financial system.
Building a blockchain for banks
Wang, who splits his time between Melbourne and Silicon Valley, co-founded Metal with Catherine Porter, a former vice president at Meta.
The startup positions itself as a 'blockchain for banking,' initially focusing on stablecoins—cryptocurrency tokens pegged to fiat currencies like the US dollar.
Metal is also developing solutions for asset tokenisation and on-chain compliance to create a blockchain that institutions can safely and efficiently transact on.
There’s so much inefficiency in the global financial system, and we’re big believers that blockchain is the technology to remove those inefficiencies.
A return to crypto
Wang's entrepreneurial journey in crypto began in 2017 with the founding of Republic Protocol, later renamed Ren Protocol, a technology for 'wrapping' Bitcoin to use on other blockchains.
In 2021, at the height of the crypto boom, Ren Protocol was acquired by Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research, though Wang departed before the collapse of the FTX empire.
He has since founded a quantum computing startup, QDX, which has ties to the Australian National University and has been involved in designing cancer treatments currently in clinical trials.
You can take the boy out of the blockchain, but you can’t take the blockchain out of the boy.
Airwallex's strategic pivot
Airwallex's involvement with Metal represents a significant shift for its co-founder and CEO, Jack Zhang, who has been a long-time sceptic of cryptocurrency.
Zhang previously questioned the utility of stablecoins, noting that it was cheaper and quicker for Airwallex to move money on its own infrastructure than on a blockchain.
The company has since poached Coinbase VP Dan Kim to lead its agentic banking operation, with Kim arguing that stablecoins are useful in countries with unreliable banking but difficult for businesses to use directly.
When you want to be a customer of something that doesn't exist, is it a very natural thing to want to invest in it because you know you'll benefit from the upside.
Airwallex is now exploring the integration of stablecoins into its platform with the help of Metal's infrastructure.
Related
