Crypto derivatives market Paradigm, which focuses on large trades, raises a $35M Series A at a $400M valuation led by Jump Capital and Alameda Research
Frank Chaparro / The Block :
Context & Ripple Effects
This round landed at the top of the 2021 crypto derivatives funding cycle: earlier that year, exchange Deribit had raised $100M at a $2.1B valuation, a mark it would slash to roughly $40M at the same $400M valuation when it went back to existing investors in September 2022. Paradigm's structure differed from an exchange's — a venue built around block-sized trades rather than a public order book.
The lead investors carry the longer arc of the story: Alameda Research, then FTX's affiliated trading desk, and Jump Capital, which stayed in the category and resurfaced in 2024 leading Figure Markets' $60M Series A.
First-order effects
- Alameda Research and Jump Capital take lead positions in infrastructure purpose-built for large derivatives trades, formally tying two of crypto's biggest trading operations to off-exchange liquidity flow.
- Paradigm gains $35M at a $400M valuation to scale its large-trade network while peer venues like Deribit were still commanding multibillion-dollar marks.
Second-order effects
- Deribit's follow-on — ~$40M at $400M, down from $100M at $2.1B a year earlier — shows how fast the category's pricing reset once the 2021 funding peak broke, pressuring every 2021-vintage valuation in crypto derivatives.
- Decentralized perpetuals venues such as SynFutures, which raised a $22M Series B led by Pantera in October 2023, chase the same professional-flow thesis, forcing OTC networks and on-chain exchanges to compete for the same large traders.
Third-order effects
- Alameda's anchor role aged into liability: testimony later showed it had borrowed $13B from FTX customers by June 2022, discrediting the market-maker-as-lead-investor model that rounds like this one depended on.
- Jump Capital's continued deployment — through Figure Markets in 2024 — points to crypto derivatives infrastructure being refinanced around surviving institutions rather than collapsed desks.
The trend: Crypto derivatives infrastructure is consolidating around institutional block-trading networks, with the identity of the market-maker backers — Alameda in 2021, Jump afterward — marking each phase of the capital cycle.