The cryptocurrency industry has been experienced a boom since the inception of bitcoin. More and more companies and entrepreneurs around the globe and entering into the cryptocurrency space with a lot of these gaining success over the years. Here is the list of top 10 Cryptocurrency Startups as of 2019:
1. Slow Ventures
Dave Morin, former Facebook manager and co-founder of Facebook Platform, started a cryptocurrency company in 2013 called Slow Ventures, with the aim to invest in upcoming companies Slow Ventures current fund has 50 core investments, including RO, Birdies, and Airtable. Dave Morin also founded the social platform Path. Slow Venture recently announced fourth big fundraise worth 220 million dollars. The firm has attracted 165 million dollars for its fourth flagship seed fund and an additional 55 million dollars for its first follow-on fund.
Slow Venture is looking to invest additional capital to the companies which are already in their portfolio.
The company has invested across geographies and industries, from digital health and wellness to enterprise to space.
2. Coinbase: Cryptocurrency Exchange
Coinbase is a bitcoin wallet and a platform where merchants and consumers can transact with the cryptocurrency. Launched in June 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, the startup attracted one million users across the globe. Coinbase currently has fiat currency of 32 currencies for users to buy cryptocurrency.
The company launched its services to buy and sell bitcoin through bank transfers as well. In 2013, the company received a US 5 million dollars investment from the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures.
Ben Reeves, Blockchain co-founder, was among the members of the original team but he later parted ways from the company because of internal dispute. Throughout 2014, the company teamed up with Overstock, Dell, Expedia, Dish Network, and Time Inc., allowing those firms to accept bitcoin payments.
Company’s total revenue at the end of 2018 was estimated at 520 million dollars, making this start as one of the most valuable of recent time.
3 Kraken: Cryptocurrency Exchange
Launched in 2011, Kraken provides cryptocurrency to fiat trading and offers price information to Bloomberg Terminal. CEO and founder Jesse Powell previously worked with Mt. Gox, which was leading Bitcoin exchange platform from 2013 to 2014.
According to CEO, Jesse Powell, he started Kraken because he saw poor management at Mt. Gox and wanted another platform for people to exchange cryptocurrency in case something happened to Mt.Gox.
So far US-based exchange has raised over 120 million dollars in 3 rounds of funding with last round taking place on 21st May of this year.
This startup emerged as a platform to reduce the bitcoin market’s dependency on a single exchange. The company initially offered a trade for only bitcoin and litecoin but gradually expanded to other cryptocurrencies as well. Kraken has maintained a high reputation for its security from the beginning, and the company was first in the business to provide cryptographically verified proof of reserves.
In 2014, the exchange was nominated among the top 10 most promising crypto exchange start-tp by Tim Sawson, author of Great Wall of Numbers, and Upstart Business named Kraken as one of the most important bitcoin company to have emerged in recent times.
4. Polychain Capital
In 2016, Olaf Carlson-wee left Coinbase and started his own company Polychain Capital, which went on to become the world’s premier investor in cryptocurrency companies.
In early 2018, Polychain became the first crypto fund to have more than 1 billion dollars in assets under management.
The investing company attracted backers from venture firms like Andreessen Horowitz. Polychain so far has invested in more than 35 crypto companies with 0(1) labs being the latest one, the company invested15 million dollars in the crypto company on 5th April 2019.
Some of the companies that Polychain has invested in are Coinflex, Coinbase, and Paradigm. Olaf Carlson-Wee was one of the first employees in Coinbase and played a part in the success of that startup.
5. BitPay: Cryptocurrency Wallet
This bitcoin wallet company started in 2011 intending to provide a comfortable, fast, secure method to process bitcoin transactions and has seen massive growth in a short period. Within one year of its launch, the wallet had more than 1000 active merchandise users. The company moved to Atlanta from Orlando after they secured investment worth of half a million dollars in seed funding and the company went on to raise 2 million dollars via founders fund.
Bitpay emerged as the leading wallet for bitcoin transactions as some of the big firms started accepting bitcoin, and Bitpay was the go-to platform for them.
The company currently is acquiring market at a very high speed by teaming up with big organizations.
In 2014, NBA team Sacramatno King announced that they would become the sports franchise to accept bitcoin for tickets and merchandise and would process by Bitpay, which was a massive success for the Bitpay.
6. Mai coin
Started in 2014 by Modernity Financial Technologies, Ltd, Mai coin is a digital wallet and exchange company based in Taiwan, the company tapped in the Asian market successfully.
Maicon has raised a total of 4 million dollars through 3 rounds of funding. Currently, the exchange has more than seven investors. Maicon is actively using more than 44 technologies for its website; these include Viewport Meta, SPF, and SSL.
The company’s annual revenue is estimated at 1.9 million dollars. The startup has seen significant growth in a short time and is looking strong to dominate the Asian market. Alex Liu, the founder, and CEO of Maicon is looking to expand the reach of this digital wallet. In 2015, the company launched a system that allowed users to buy bitcoin at 10,000 convenience stores in the territory, both over the counter and at in-store terminals which made the Maicoin as largest digital asset brokerage in Taiwan.
7. Protocol Labs
Juan Benet, Stanford University alumni, founded Protocol Labs in 2014 to provide research, development and deployment labs for network protocols. The company raised 700,000 million dollars through seed funding in the starting year. Lab Protocols create software that tackles significant challenges with open source creation method.
Juan also collaborated with AngelList to produce CoinList: a financial service platform for digital assets. He is also known for creating InterPlanetary File System IPFS an open-source peer to peer decentralized web protocol.
This research development based company has gained a lot of investors over the years.
8 Ripio
Rebranded from Bitpagos to Ripio, the startup aims to democratize access to financial services through the use of Blockchain technology. The startup based in San Fransisco provides its services to clients in Latin America. The company allows merchants to process transactions with the credit card or bitcoins for a fraction of cost. It also will enable users to bitcoin with cash.
Ripio also provides credit to its users in Argentina, Brazil, and other South American countries. In the coming years, Ripio is looking to expand its reach to Columbia, Chile, and Uruguay.
Founder and CEO of Ripio Sebastian Serrano said in order to expand to other countries they would have to tie up with fiat centric partnerships.
The startup became very popular in South America and gained a lot of users in a very short time and with plans to expand to other countries will only boost the success of the company.
9. GoCoin
Kevin Beauregard, the founder of GoCoin, raised 1.5 million dollars in funds in 2014 and made GoCoin one of the most used payment method for Bitcoin. The claims that by trading volume up to 10% of transactions in bitcoin takes place on their platform. The company also has 13000 merchants around the globe who use GoCoin for bitcoin transactions.
This startup has become one of the most extensively used digital payment methods, and it is still gaining popularity around the globe.
Established in 2013, GoCoin also provides various features that other digital wallets don’t. CEO Beauregard has said that they are looking to expand their global reach. Just like other fiat currency digital wallets, GoCoin stores users credit card for transactions for next time.
10. Ripple
Ripple, launched in 2012 is a global gross settlement system, US-based technology company is built upon a distributed open protocol system. The company supports both cryptocurrency and fiat currency. With secure and instant global transactions with no chargeback the company has become one of the leading platforms for global transactions
With increasing global financial transactions, Ripple has a strong future. Currently, banks dominate global transaction with 95% market share but with Ripple setting an example, the crypto and blockchain industry may see high growth in the coming years.
