Joe Kelly, Co-Founder and CEO of Unchained Capital, courtesy photo.

Austin-based Unchained Capital, a crypto-finance startup, announced Thursday that it has closed on $2.99 million in a seed stage round of funding.

The company reports the funding will go to hiring new employees and working on its financial services and wealth management offerings.

Unchained Capital’s investors include Michael Komaransky, formerly of Cumberland Mining; Brian Spaly, prolific angel investor and co-founder of Bonobos and Trunk Club; Mike W. Erwin and Whurley of Ecliptic Capital; and Ezra Galston of Starting Line, an early venture investor in the crypto sector. In addition to making investments in the seed round, Komaransky, Erwin and Galston will join Unchained Capital’s board.

“Crypto assets are now a nearly $500 billion asset class, but are functionally invisible to the existing financial system,” Galston, Founder of Starting Line, said in a news release. “Holdings won’t enable consumers to obtain a mortgage, gain credit or serve as collateral. Unchained is bridging that gap.”

“Crypto-finance is redefining the concept of the traditional long-term investment thesis,” Erwin, Co-founder of Ecliptic Capital, said in a news release. “Unchained Capital is building the financial infrastructure for the wealth management of tomorrow, yet available for savvy crypto investors today.”

In addition to the funding announcement, Unchained Capital announced it has expanded its lending capabilities by providing Ethereum-collateralized (ETH) loans in addition to its previous ability to lend against Bitcoin.

“Accepting ETH as collateral has been high on our priority list since the beginning—lots of customers have asked for it,” Joe Kelly, CEO, Unchained Capital, said in a news release. “When it comes to accepting new forms of collateral, our first thoughts go toward security. Unlike other crypto-lenders out there who utilize exchanges, third parties or single sig addresses for collateral storage, we wanted to make sure we offered the most secure storage solution possible before opening up lending publicly.”