Even as retail traders flee the crypto markets amid plummeting prices, large financial institutions continue to lean into digital assets. That’s positioned STS Digital, a Bermuda-based startup that caters towards institutional investors, to benefit, and it’s raised $30 million to expand its offerings despite the crypto downturn.
STS Digital lets deep-pocketed traders buy and sell crypto options. The company is also an options market maker, meaning that it takes the other sides of trades to add liquidity to asset pools. The venture outfit CMT Digital led the startup’s fundraising round. Other participants include the crypto exchange Kraken, the venture firm Arrington Capital, and an investment arm of Fidelity. Maxime Seiler, cofounder and CEO of STS Digital, declined to specify at what valuation his startup raised its capital.
“[STS Digital] is offering options contracts on over 400 cryptocurrencies at this point,” Sam Hallene, an investment partner at CMT Digital, told Fortune. “That’s not broadly offered in the market, because it’s a very tough, technical, and risk-management problem to solve, and we feel like they’ve solved that.”
Perps and options
STS Digital’s fundraise comes as crypto perpetuals, not options, are the most talked-about derivative in crypto. Proponents of perpetuals say they are an easier concept for most traders to grasp. The derivatives let traders take on more leverage without worrying about options’ expiration dates or the complexities of “calls” or “puts.” The financial assets’ popularity has led to the rise of upstart crypto protocols like Hyperliquid and Lighter.
But Seiler, the CEO of STS Digital, believes there’s a downside to the expansion of perps, which let traders magnify their gains or losses. “That’s how you end up in a 10/10,” he said, referring to Oct. 10, when cryptocurrency prices plummeted as traders saw more than $19 billion in positions evaporate in one day. “These crypto-native exchanges on perps led and amplified this whole selloff by liquidating clients, driving prices down further by creating more liquidation.”
Instead, Seiler believes that options, which let traders specify the end date of their bet and therefore cap their losses, give savvy investors like institutions more protection amid volatile markets.
He and his cofounder Gideon Hyams used to be institutional traders themselves. Seiler started his career at Credit Suisse, and Hyams worked for almost two decades at UBS. The two met while working at the trading firm G-20 and eventually decided to launch their own business together.
In 2022, the pair founded STS Digital, which has since grown to almost 50 employees. The company now counts brand-name crypto companies among its customers, including the Uniswap Foundation. And it’s tripled its annual revenue from 2024 to 2025.
Seiler said STS Digital is profitable but declined to specify by how much. He and Hyams plan to use the $30 million injection into their business to let their company execute bigger trades for bigger clients and hire more employees.
“We’re getting more and more institutional-size clients onboarding,” said Hyams. “They want to do bigger trades, so we’re scaling the business.”
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