Beta Finance, which offers one-click option to short crypto assets, raises from Sequoia Capital India and others

Beta Finance, a decentralized finance protocol that has developed a one-click solution for lending, borrowing and shorting of any crypto asset, said on Friday it has raised $5.75 million across its private and public launchpad investments rounds.

The private investment round was led by Sequoia Capital India. ParaFi Capital, DeFiance Capital, Spartan Group, GSR, Delphi Digital and Multicoin Capital also participated.

The startup, founded by Allen Lee, is attempting to make it easier for users to short a crypto coin to fight the price volatility and also give them another avenue to hedge their risk.

Existing DeFi protocols only support the borrowing and shorting of a very limited selection of mature crypto assets -- leaving the vast majority of such tokens inaccessible to users.

Beta Finance, which is built atop the Ethereum blockchain, says it is filling this inefficiency by creating what it calls the first user-friendly protocol that offers a wider choice and functionality.

Its one-click solution enables traders without technical know-how to manage and update their short positions on any token with all relevant token information directly available on the interface to guide their decision. "Users can short many of the most volatile assets neglected by existing money markets, which helps offset volatility, hedge risk and gain healthier returns," the startup said.

“We see short selling as a critical piece of financial infrastructure that has been missing from the DeFi protocol,” said Lee in an interview with TechCrunch. “For DeFi to replace traditional finance, we believe that it’s necessary to build tools such as short selling.”

Beta Finance, whose coin BETA trades on Binance, "has the potential to be a category-defining protocol," said Pieter Kemps, principal at Sequoia India, in a statement.

The startup says within the first month of its platform's launch, it had processed more than 10,000 deposits, 1,000 borrows and 500 short positions for over 10,000 unique addresses. The protocol had an average total value locked of over $195 million, the startup said.

"In addition to being the pioneer for one-click shorting, Beta has already proven its ability to accommodate a diverse range of assets (including volatile ones) while remaining secure by becoming the very first protocol to short an NFT when it enabled short-selling for the $NFD token, just a week after launching the protocol. We are very optimistic that Beta will become a key stakeholder for the DeFi ecosystem going forward," said Kemps.

Beta Finance will deploy the fresh capital to broaden its product offerings and hire more talent, Lee said.