TransCrypts, a blockchain startup that creates tools for people to own and share verified credentials, has raised a $15 million seed round led by Pantera Capital.
The round included Lightspeed Faction, Alpha Edison, Motley Fool Ventures, and a mix of returning investors such as Mark Cuban and Protocol Labs.
The financing comes after a strong summer for the San Francisco-based company. In September, TransCrypts won CoinDesk’s Pitchfest at Consensus Hong Kong, taking home $10,000 in tokens, a trophy, and ten training sessions.
Founder and CEO Zain Zaidi said the win helped the team refine its vision of what he calls “self-sovereign identity,” a way for people to control their data directly, without relying on employers, universities or government agencies.
bureaucratic mishap
Zaidi founded the company after a bureaucratic mishap nearly cost him his place in graduate school when his transcripts were lost. “If we can’t demonstrate who we are or what we’ve done, we lose something essential,” he said in a previous interview with CoinDesk.
TransCrypts started by digitizing employment verification. Its platform allows users to collect, encrypt, and share records directly with employers, background checkers, or others who need them. The system stores encrypted data off-chain, while hashes are on-chain, so users can prove authenticity without revealing personal details.
Now, with HIPAA certification secured, TransCrypts plans to extend the model to health and education credentials. That could allow patients to carry verified medical records between providers, or graduates to share diplomas and academic records with potential employers, all without the need for intermediaries.
chain identity
The move comes as fraud risks are on the rise. Americans lost $43 billion to identity theft in 2023, and deepfake scams have increased more than 1,800 percent in one year, according to the company’s statement. Zaidi argues that decentralized identity could help counter these trends by allowing people to control what data is shared, when, and with whom.
TransCrypts says it already serves 4 million users and more than 450 enterprise customers, including healthcare and staffing companies. The new capital will fund expansion into these regulated sectors and strengthen tools to verify credentials in real time.
For users, that could mean faster hiring or simplified onboarding for hospitals and schools. For the broader market, it signals growing confidence in blockchain-based identity systems, a once niche idea now seen as a potential safeguard against the age of deepfakes.
