Former a16z crypto investor Sam Broner has co-founded The Better Money Company with college friend Adam Zuckerman, a former Latham & Watkins attorney who served as general counsel at Eigen Labs. According to reports from crypto.news, the startup has raised $10 million in seed funding to build a stablecoin clearinghouse for U.S. dollar tokens. The funding round was led by Broner's former firm a16z crypto, with participation from early-stage investors BoxGroup and Sunflower Capital. Angel backers include Circle co-founder Sean Neville and former Microsoft strategy chief Charlie Songhurst, signaling that both stablecoin insiders and Web2 veterans see opportunity in regulated infrastructure. The startup's experience in the space, along with a16z's investment, signals institutional confidence in the future of blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
The stablecoin market currently faces significant fragmentation with over 20 major stablecoins in existence, creating inefficiencies for users and developers. As reported by crypto.news, there is no central clearing mechanism that enables seamless and cost-effective conversions between different USD-backed stablecoins. The $100 billion+ stablecoin market has grown significantly through its use in payments, DeFi, and cross-border transactions, with institutional interest now shifting toward applications that solve real-world problems like faster settlement and reduced transaction costs. The clearinghouse model draws parallels to historical 19th-century banknote-clearinghouses, designed to transform many-to-many stablecoin conversions into a unified network that can reduce costs and improve transaction efficiency.
As reported by crypto.news, Better Money plans to support GENIUS Act-compliant dollar tokens such as Paxos and Stripe's Bridge, while explicitly excluding Tether's global USDT product. The company has secured commitments from several issuers, including Paxos, Stripe's Bridge unit and MoonPay. According to law firm Morgan Lewis, the GENIUS Act creates a dual licensing regime for fiat-backed stablecoin issuers, forces monthly disclosure of reserves and annual audited financials for issuers with more than $50 billion outstanding, and gives the U.S. Treasury power to declare foreign regimes non-compliant. The startup's approach to compliance will be closely monitored as it navigates the regulatory landscape.
According to crypto.news, Better Money will initially handle only payment tokens that meet GENIUS Act requirements and plans to support all 'signed and effective' GENIUS-compliant dollar tokens. The company has launched job listings on Indeed showing hiring for engineers in New York at salaries between $175,000 and $225,000, describing the company as building a stablecoin clearinghouse. Broner told Fortune that the clearinghouse will focus on 'low-cost, high-throughput swaps' for institutional clients, with the product expected to go live 'in the coming weeks' once technical integrations and legal opinions are finalized. The startup's ability to attract major stablecoin issuers and institutional investors suggests it could influence the direction of the stablecoin infrastructure space.
Recent stablecoin market volatility highlights the need for institutional infrastructure solutions, with the market losing $1.04 billion in value this week alone due to net redemptions across seven of the top ten stablecoins. As reported by crypto.news, USDC experienced the largest outflows, while USDT maintained its dominant 58% market share. The trend reflects a capital rotation within stablecoins rather than a broader exit from the market. Tether has launched USAT, a separate dollar-pegged token engineered to operate within GENIUS Act rules through a federally chartered bank, which will be supported on Better Money alongside tokens from Paxos and other regulated issuers. Broner spent more than two years at a16z crypto focusing on stablecoin and payments investments, while Zuckerman worked on early GENIUS Act analyses at Latham & Watkins before moving to Eigen Labs, giving the company expertise in both policy and infrastructure development.
