Draper Cygnus led a USD1m seed round in Lemon Cash, an Argentine crypto banking platform, with participation from Draper University Ventures and Tim Draper.

(Press Release) – Over the next decade we expect more than 2 billion people adopting crypto powered financial services, especially in underserved markets like Latam.

5 years ago, notorious crypto evangelist Andreas Antonopolous predicted the coming blockchain driven “infrastructure inversion” that would cause a revolution in the way financial services are built and delivered.

Now that prophecy is becoming a reality. The incumbents are eager to participate, and as an early majority begins mass adoption, enormous challenges and opportunities emerge for crypto builders.

Leveraged by the raw power of decentralized finance primitives, companies like Lemon embraces the challenge of building the next generation of ultra-inclusive, easy to use, customized, fast and efficient financial services, and of course onboarding and delighting many millions of customers. The challenge is even bigger in an place with very limited infrastructure like Latin America.

Several layers of crypto infrastructure are going to be probably commoditized, and many key aspects of the industry are still uncertain, but bold generational brands representing the future of financial services will emerge and become very valuable as they transform.

As believers in the crypto revolution, at Draper Cygnus we are ready to back bold visions and big ideas, the most difficult part is finding the teams capable of making them a reality.

We are pleased to announce our investment in Lemon.

We came to the conclusion that Chelo, Borja, Guido and the Lemon team have what it takes to make history, and we decided to back them jointly with Draper University (DU) and Tim Draper.

Fast and frugal execution, constant iteration, talent attraction, growth and an enormous drive and conviction are key in this early stage.

Starting just a year ago with very limited pre-seed resources from DU, Lemon has been building, delivering and validating innovative financial products in Patagonia remote areas like San Martín de los Andes, with great success. Now they are ready to scale.

We are excited to be partnering with Lemon to bring decentralized inclusion, opportunity and prosperity to tens of millions in Latam.