Tempo Raises $500 Million for Stablecoin Payments, Ethereum Developer Joins

Tempo, a blockchain for stablecoin payment processing, just concluded a $500 million fundraising round. With TradFi support, this Stripe subsidiary could soon become a major player in the sector.

Although analysts wondered if Tempo could disrupt Ethereum, a veteran developer announced that he’s joining the firm today. If Tempo keeps growing, it may play a complementary role to existing infrastructure.

Tempo’s Successful Fundraising

Stripe, a world-famous payments processor, has been building its stablecoin market presence for several months. Just yesterday, the firm even expanded its native support for these assets, enabling subscription payments.

Today, however, one of its subsidiaries, Tempo, made history with a massive fundraising round.

According to a new report, Tempo just concluded a Series A fundraising round with $500 million in investment. This raises the blockchain developer’s valuation to $5 billion, making this one of the highest valued blockchain venture rounds in several years.

As an added bonus, a veteran Ethereum Foundation developer chose this fundraising round to announce his switch to Tempo. Although Dankrad Feist has worked on Ethereum since 2018, he claimed that this startup could usher in real change to crypto:

Could This Disrupt Crypto?

Feist even claimed that Tempo’s work will complement Ethereum’s vision in the long run. Although some analysts believed that Tempo would compete with ETH when the firm launched last month, Feist apparently doesn’t agree. Considering his long history with the blockchain, he seems like a reputable authority on the subject.

In any case, this funding round also represents TradFi’s growing commitment to stablecoins. Stripe and Paradigm, Tempo’s creators, didn’t actually contribute to recent fundraising, but many new partners did. These include Greenoaks, Sequoia, and several other VC firms. In particular, Jared Kushner’s Thrive Capital played a leading role.

Tempo is remaining neutral regarding its potential contributions to the stablecoin sector. Although it seeks to disrupt existing stablecoin issuers’ market presence, Tempo hasn’t announced plans to launch its own token.

So far, its payment processing blockchain is set to be compatible with multiple third-party tokens.

Still, if the firm changes these policies, it could have a large impact. Tempo’s fundraising round shows that it has a lot of TradFi support and may become a prominent presence in the space.