September 29, 2025
Maureen Downs was named a Finalist for the U.S. Women in Finance Awards hosted by Markets Media. The eleventh-annual iteration of MMG’s flagship Women in Finance Awards program was held Tuesday, November 11 at The Plaza in New York City.
September 23, 2025
Via CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/23/startup-zerohash-raises-104million-morgan-stanley-sofi-apollo.html
Crypto infrastructure startup Zerohash has raised $104 million in funding with backing from financial firms including Morgan Stanley and SoFi, CNBC has learned.
The Series D round was led by Interactive Brokers, the global automated trading firm, and includes strategic investors who are also clients of Zerohash, founder and CEO Edward Woodford told CNBC in an interview. The company is valued at $1 billion, he said.
“We wanted to raise from the largest, most trusted brands in the world and have that be the bridge into this new technology,” he said.
Funds managed by Apollo also participated in the round, according to Zerohash.
The startup is among a wave of firms, both publicly traded and privately held, taking advantage of the more favorable regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies under President Donald Trump.
After Trump took office this year, the government flipped from being highly skeptical of crypto under former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler to embracing it as a nascent technology.
Suddenly, the CEOs of financial firms including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America were expressing confidence that they would get involved. SoFi CEO Anthony Noto told CNBC in April that he was ready to bring crypto trading back after the regulatory shift.
Founded in 2017, Zerohash provides banks and fintech firms with the ability to offer blockchain-based products in three major areas: crypto trading, stablecoins and tokenization, according to Woodford.
“Part of this raise is obviously accelerating [adoption] across all three of those verticals with a range of customers who are also investors,” he said.
Interactive Brokers already uses Zerohash for crypto trading and custody and will launch a stablecoin product with the firm, Woodford said.
While Woodford said he couldn’t comment on whether Morgan Stanley and SoFi were also clients, he suggested announcements will be coming. Spokespeople for Morgan Stanley and SoFi declined to comment.
“These groups aren’t VCs,” Woodford said. “You can assume that there’s obviously a couple of announcements coming down the road with these other investors.”
Later Tuesday, Morgan Stanley said in a memo obtained by CNBC that it was close to offering crypto trading though its E-Trade division with the help of Zerohash.
EP3® Update Highlights July – August, 2025:
We are continually enhancing the functionality and performance that EP3 offers Exchange Operators. A nice performance increase was obtained when we rearchitected, where Pre-Trade Risk on inbound orders is checked. We also expanded the granularity at which commissions can be charged, and improved EP3 operational observability.
Pre-Trade Risk has been moved to the matching engine
The Pre-Trade Risk (PTR) service was re-architected to run alongside the matching engine. This change allows customers to perform the EP3 Pre-Trade Risk checks on incoming orders without incurring any performance penalty.
Expanded the Number of Available Commission Tiers
EP3 customers who utilize the EP3 commission functionality now have nine separate tiers available to them. This gives EP3 customers the ability to design multiple commission levels to match their individual business use cases.
Grafana Dashboard Updates
EP3 now supports the latest versions of Grafana and Prometheus. This upgrade allows enhanced observability into EP3 for exchange operators.
September 10, 2025
Via Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/blockchain-lender-figure-raises-7875-million-us-ipo-2025-09-11/
Sept 10 (Reuters) – Stablecoin issuer Figure Technology, along with some of its existing investors, raised $787.5 million in a U.S. initial public offering on Wednesday, becoming the latest crypto firm to tap public markets as digital assets gain mainstream acceptance.
A string of regulatory wins under a pro-crypto White House, corporate treasury adoption and inflows from exchange-traded funds have spurred listings from the sector, which recently surpassed a market value of $4 trillion.
