Zero Hash

Zero Hash achieved unicorn status with a $104 million Series D-2 funding round in September 2025, led by Interactive Brokers. The round included significant investments from Morgan Stanley, Apollo-managed funds, and SoFi, bringing the company's total funding to $275 million.

The company previously raised a $105 million Series D in January 2022, led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Point72 Ventures and Nyca Partners. Other notable investors across funding rounds include Jump Crypto, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, FTMO, IMC, Liberty City Ventures, and PEAK6.

Zero Hash operates as crypto infrastructure that abstracts away the complexity of blockchain technology behind simple APIs and SDKs. Companies can integrate crypto trading, stablecoin payments, custody, and tokenization capabilities without needing to handle private keys, run blockchain nodes, or obtain money transmitter licenses themselves.

The platform centers around four core modules. The trading engine provides buy/sell functionality across 80+ digital assets through RFQ or order book endpoints, with Zero Hash acting as counterparty for clearing and settlement.

The payments infrastructure supports multiple stablecoins including USDC, USDT, PYUSD, and RLUSD across 15+ blockchains, enabling on/off-ramps, cross-border remittances, and merchant payouts. The custody solution offers segregated MPC wallets with 1:1 asset backing, plus staking services for networks like Sei and Polkadot.

The tokenization engine allows companies to mint fungible or NFT tokens across eight blockchains with programmable economics and automated yield distribution. A front-end SDK released in 2024 embeds user agreements, jurisdictional asset filters, and compliance controls, allowing developers to launch crypto features in under three weeks.

Zero Hash handles all regulatory compliance through its FinCEN MSB registration, 51 US money transmitter licenses, NYDFS BitLicense, and new North Carolina trust charter for qualified custody services.

Zero Hash operates a B2B infrastructure model, selling crypto-as-a-service through APIs that embed into other companies' products. Rather than serving end consumers directly, Zero Hash enables fintechs, brokerages, and traditional financial institutions to offer crypto capabilities to their own customers.

The company monetizes through transaction-based fees across its four service lines: trading, payments, custody, and tokenization. With an implied take rate of 0.146% on transaction volume, Zero Hash captures revenue each time a partner's end user trades crypto, sends a stablecoin payment, or interacts with tokenized assets.

This model creates a capital-efficient business where Zero Hash doesn't need to acquire end customers directly or maintain consumer-facing applications. Instead, it leverages its partners' existing customer relationships and distribution channels while providing the regulated infrastructure backbone.

The regulatory wrapper is central to the value proposition. By maintaining money transmitter licenses across 51 US states, NYDFS BitLicense, and a trust charter, Zero Hash allows partners to offer crypto services without obtaining their own complex regulatory approvals.

Revenue scales with partner growth and transaction volume rather than seat-based subscriptions. As partners onboard more users and those users transact more frequently, Zero Hash's revenue grows proportionally without requiring additional customer acquisition costs.

Stripe has expanded into crypto with checkout-style APIs for USDC payments and stablecoin payouts, charging 1.5% of volume while keeping merchants off direct blockchain interaction. Visa and Mastercard are building native stablecoin settlement across multiple blockchains, giving card issuers direct access without intermediaries.

Coinbase offers Wallet-as-a-Service and embedded wallets that auto-connect to Coinbase's liquidity and Base layer-2 network. Circle provides programmable wallets plus cross-chain transfer protocol for USDC and EURC, positioning as both stablecoin issuer and infrastructure provider.

These players control both balance sheet liquidity and global distribution, allowing them to bundle custody, liquidity, and payments at lower take rates than specialized infrastructure providers.

Fireblocks provides non-custodial MPC wallet APIs with embedded trading and staking capabilities. BitGo offers qualified custody plus MPC solutions, recently adding tokenized equities through partnerships.

Anchorage Digital focuses on institutional custody with native staking across multiple networks. These custody specialists often have deeper blockchain integrations and more sophisticated key management but lack Zero Hash's integrated trading and payments capabilities.

MoonPay, Banxa, and Sardine focus specifically on fiat-to-crypto conversion with embedded widgets and compliance tools. These players often offer faster onboarding and more payment methods but lack the full-stack infrastructure for custody, trading, and tokenization that Zero Hash provides.

Stablecoin transaction volumes reached $35 trillion in 2024, exceeding Visa and Mastercard settlement volumes combined. Zero Hash can capture more of this flow by expanding its multi-chain stablecoin support and targeting B2B payments, global payroll, and treasury management use cases.

The addition of regulated stablecoins like RLUSD and PYUSD positions Zero Hash to benefit from potential GENIUS Act compliance requirements. As central bank digital currencies emerge, the company's regulatory infrastructure could extend to CBDC settlement and distribution.

The tokenized asset market has reached $20.6 billion with 85% year-over-year growth. Zero Hash's new trust charter enables qualified custody for SEC-registered firms, opening access to thousands of registered investment advisors and broker-dealers.

Expanding settlement, staking, and collateral services for tokenized US Treasuries and investment funds could multiply transaction volumes. The company's partnerships with Franklin Templeton and Securitize demonstrate early traction in institutional tokenization workflows.

Zero Hash's May 2025 VASP registration in Argentina provides regulatory foundation for Latin American expansion, targeting one of the fastest-growing remittance and stablecoin adoption markets.

The company can leverage its multi-jurisdictional compliance framework to enter other high-growth crypto markets while serving regional neobanks, remittance providers, and payroll platforms seeking alternatives to traditional correspondent banking networks.

Regulatory fragmentation: Evolving crypto regulations across jurisdictions could require Zero Hash to obtain additional licenses or modify its service offerings, potentially increasing compliance costs and limiting market access in key regions where regulatory frameworks remain unclear or restrictive.

Competitive compression: Large incumbents like Visa, Stripe, and Coinbase can leverage existing customer relationships and balance sheet advantages to offer similar infrastructure services at lower take rates, potentially compressing Zero Hash's pricing power and market share.

Stablecoin concentration: Zero Hash's growth depends heavily on continued stablecoin adoption and regulatory acceptance, making the business vulnerable to potential restrictions on stablecoin usage or shifts toward central bank digital currencies that bypass private stablecoin infrastructure entirely.