Stablecoin Startup Founded by VanEck CEO’s Son Receives $50M Funding

Stablecoin:- With over $257 billion in market cap, Stablecoins have been receiving consideration attention from the DeFi and TradeFi circles. Stablecoins as the dollar pegged coins are being not only adopted but issued by leading players.

This list includes the likes of JP Morgan, Ant Group, Standard Chartered, BBVA among other institutions considering to issue their own stablecoin by 2025.

As the demand continues to grow, a stablecoin starup called Agora has received $50M funding boost to develop its stablecoin infrastructure kit further. The funding round that concluded on June 10 was lead by Paradigm with participation from Dragonfly with the former announcing its partnership too.

Agora was founded in year 2023 by Nick van Eck who currently serves as the CEO of the project, leading its white-label stablecoin efforts. Interestingly, he is the son of Jan van Eck, founder of VanEck asset management.

Its other two co-founders are Drake Evans (CTO, Co‑Founder) and Joe McGrady, Agora’s COO. Joe brings operational expertise from traditional finance Co‑Founder while Drake was previously an engineer at MakerDAO, bringing deep DeFi protocol experience.

Augora – Helping Businesses to Launch Their own Stablecoin

Augora’s core product is the AUSD (Agora’s Stablecoin). AUSD is a fully reserved, 1:1 USD-pegged stablecoin backed by cash, U.S. Treasuries, and repo agreements. Its reserves are custodied by State Street and managed by VanEck.

With its multi-chain reach, it is live on 13+ chains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum. Similar to other stablecoins, AUSD supports payments, trading, lending, and cross-border remittance with institutional-grade reliability. I

Alongside its funding, the project announced its new product too – the White-labeled Stablecoins for all. This new product offers Turnkey issuance services for enterprises, allowing them to issue their own branded stablecoins in days using Agora’s platform.

The created stablecoin will keep yield control to the client only with revenue sharing. Augora’s product also handles the licensing, compliance and monitoring requirements and has built a dashboard for all the data which is required to create the stablecoin. 

In a X Post, the project said, “We aim to foster an ecosystem where creating, managing, and integrating stablecoins becomes seamless so that every fintech, exchange, and enterprise can benefit from having its own stablecoin whether it be AUSD or newUSD – as a product feature, revenue growth lever, and strategic differentiator.”

Issuing Own Stablecoin is the Hyped Demand

In the beginning of the year, Galaxy Research had predicted atleast 10 new stablecoins expected to launch this year via partnerships between traditional financial institutions and crypto firms.

These include dollar and euro coins from major banks like Société Générale, Standard Chartered, ING, plus issuances from banks in Brazil and Singapore (e.g., Braza Bank, DBS). However, as we witness the current momentum, the number is surely set to surpass. 

Further, VC investments in stablecoin-related startups has also surged during Q1 and Q2 2025. In Q1 2025, Stablecoin/payment startups led deal volume. Over 7.5% of all crypto VC deals were in payment or stablecoin issuance, surpassing any quarterly total from 2021.

In the subsequent Q2 2025 too, the Crypto VC interest surged with continued mometum already visible in Q3. This is also attributed to the growing regulatory environment around stablecoins.

On June 17, the US senate passed the GENIUS Act enabling private firms to issue fully backed payment stablecoins under strict rules.. Further, the upcoming “Crypto Week” is set to consider the GENIUS Act along with companion legislations for final prudence.

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