BLOCKCHAIN INDUSTRY REVIEW
Issue 1 January 2021
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Blockchain in gene testing & owning your data • Your DNA stored on blockchain • Blockchain in craft drinks • Blockchain in whiskey supply chain • Institutional investment into crypto • DeFi - can it democratise finance • What a blockchain fund looks for in startups • Joining an accelerator program - what you should know • Crypto Market Data • Upcoming Industry Events
Hi! Welcome to our first edition of Blockchain Industry Review! The COVID lockdown and the resulting economic fallout has changed the world irrevocably. Yet in these times, many blockchain companies have thrived whilst many crypto companies, particularly exchanges, those involved in crypto investment and those in DeFi - or decentralised finance, have flourished beyond their wildest dreams. Innovation in crypto payments is changing faster than ever, crypto adoption is soaring with everything from animal sanctuaries to global corporations now accepting Bitcoin for donations and payments, and companies are now using cryptocurrency in a multitude of use cases from loyalty programmes to micropayments to micro-loans and even now wages. Blockchain is fast being employed by corporations in many industries including finance, supply chain and logistics, content and digital rights management and increasingly in bringing transparency and a degree of accountability for food, clothing, conflict minerals and more. We will release an issue of Blockchain Industry Review every month. Here, we will talk to those creating value in this space, thinking outside the box (and goodness knows we need this more than ever) and delivering real world, real examples of how blockchain and or cryptocurrency can transform business and industry. We'll give you deep dive interviews and features. If you have a business that is challenging the system, making a difference and shining a light on crypto or blockchain technology – contact us at hello@cryptocurryclub.com to be considered to be featured in our coming editions. Read on to discover more! Erica Stanford, Founder of Crypto Curry Club and Blockchain Industry Review
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BLOCKCHAIN INDUSTRY REVIEW BROUGHT TO YOU BY
Page 4
Genomics and Blockchain who's profiting from your data?
Dr David Koepsell, CEO of EncrypGen
Page 10 DNA and Blockchain-allowing you to control your data Daniel Uribe, Founder of GenoBank.io
Page 17 Issue 1, January 2021 Not Subscribed? Subscribe to receive the digital edition at cryptocurryclub.com/ blockchainindustryreview
FOUNDER - ERICA STANFORD
Blockchain and Beer
Shane McCarthy, MD and founder of Ireland Craft Beverages, Killowen Distillery & Downstream Blockchain Beer
Page 26 Whiskey on the Blockchain Alex Bruce, CEO of Adelphi Distillery
Page 33 Institutional Investment into Crypto. Whats happening and what's next? Niclas Sandstrom, Co-Founder of Hilbert Capital
EDITOR- JILIAN GODSIL Award winning journalist, broadcaster and author, passionate about blockchain and diversity
Page 39 DeFi: Is this what will democratise finance? Anish Mohammed, Co-Founder R2Labs
FOLLOW US AT: CRYPTOCURRYCLUB/
Page 44 Blockchain Investors: Blockchain Founders Fund Aly Madhavji, CEO and founder of Blockchain Founders Fund
@CRYPTOCURRYCLUB
Page 49 Joining an accelerator programme - what you should know
CRYPTOCURRYCLUB.COM
CMS, the law firm running one of the biggest ones
HELLO@CRYPTOCURRYCLUB.COM @CRYPTOCURRYCLUB.COM
Page 58 Cryptocurrency Market Data Page 62 Upcoming Industry Events Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P3
GENOMICS AND BLOCKCHAIN WHO'S PROFITING FROM YOUR DATA?
CONVERSATION WITH DR DAVID KOEPSELL, CEO OF ENCRYPGEN, FOUNDING PARTNER AT BTBLOCK HEALTH GROUP AND ADVISOR TO CONSENSYS HEALTH Data ownership - a term we’ve all had to become familiar with in recent years.
Data is the new oil and personal data is our new oil. Social media has in part been responsible for our awareness: both in terms of how much personal data we give away, often unknowingly, and in terms of the value of this data, represented by the millions of dollars harvested by giants such as Facebook.
Traditional social media sites are now being deserted in droves as younger generations are rejecting their questionable data policies and their unfair weighting of monetary DETAIL >
rewards in favour of the platform over the individuals.
But do individuals own their data? This is a question posed by Dr David Koepsell, philosopher, lawyer, lecturer, entrepreneur, author and the CEO and founder of EncrypGen (http://encrypgen.com), a next generation blockchain solution for genomic data. His premise:
'data cannot, in any rational sense, be possessed or owned at all’. “In the same way you might have certain hopes and dreams. You don’t own them. They are something that you hold and think are important, and you might even value them,
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but you don’t own them in any sense that we use the term ownership. That’s why we are thinking in new ways to expand the blockchain foundation for EncrypGen, to give better control which is what we all want.”
Onto genomics now.
DETAIL >
A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. Each genome contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism. In humans, a copy of the entire genome—more than 3 billion DNA base pairs—is contained in all cells that have a nucleus.
In 2017 David launched EncrypGen and went live in 2018. The platform is a marketplace for people to record their DNA and sell it to pharmaceutical companies. The reason he set it up was as an antitheses to a billion-dollar business that had sprung up around DNA since the human genome was first mapped at the turn of this century.
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Commercial companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com are huge multimillion-dollar businesses that provide genome sequencing for individuals at a very low cost.
The cost of obtaining your genome is around $90, so it seems to be a loss leader. In an industry that is pretty much unregulated, it is estimated that this data is sold at least 200 times over. The industry on the consumer side is termed recreational, but each person is asked at time of purchase if will they allow their data to be ‘used for science’. It is understood that some 80% of people comply. This then allows the testing companies to sell the data for commerce.
It is mostly sold to pharmaceutical companies which in turn use it for science but this middle section is pure commerce and the space which EncrypGen wishes to disrupt.
“There is no transparency as to the path the data sets take after being purchased. This has other implications for use which is why we want to offer a marketplace that uses blockchain to track the transactions – and returns control to the people who submit the data as well as monetary rewards.”
DETAIL >
Having access to large data pools of DNA is significant in the research for new drugs, to identify disease patterns, to move medicine forward in leaps. Again there is currently very little transparency on the deals.
One Parkinson study run by Pfizer is estimated to have purchased 3000 data sets from 23andMe for several million dollars. It is estimated that each person’s DNA was valued at $10,000 each. Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P6
Even allowing for 23andMe to recover costs and profits it would have been a tidy sum to earn if the individuals were compensated directly. DETAIL >
David also points out that in time this industry should move from recreational - i.e. people using DNA sequencing to find out about their heritage - to using this technology for medical purposes, to chart your over all health and predict possible health conditions.
“Imagine in time being able to sequence your DNA and then apply the results to your general health, taking preventative steps to avoid pinpointed diseases through diet, exercise or proactive medicine.� Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P7
EncrypGen has been up and running since late 2018. Some 1500 people have uploaded their DNA onto the site. The platform does not offer testing directly but can direct people to third parties, or they can use the existing high-profile commercial companies if they wish. “The difference is that the users on the site set the price and they earn money from controlling their data.” In a relatively short time, David hopes to hit critical mass in terms of numbers.
Already scientists are dabbling on the platform and people have sold their DNA. Asked if they will vet the scientists or purchasers of the data directly, David says no.
The whole area of genomes is still a fairy murky one. David tells an example of there being several public DNA databases which Law Enforcement uses to track down cold cases. There are laws already governing this area and these are set to grow as the market DETAIL matures. On our marketplace we will> anonymise the people protecting their personal
data and allowing them to see how many times the data is sold – to their benefit.”
There are a number of public genomic databases where people in the past decade had donated their data to be used for science, hobbyists and ancestry. These are deidentified but there is usually some quality of information that can lead the DNA back to a person.
"In the case of Golden Gate Killer, they found a relative of the man in one of these databases and so he was identified.” Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P8
It’s a whole can of worms. This is me talking now. I mean I get how it is great to catch a serial killer but could an unscrupulous actor also use the same facility to track down an innocent person, like something from a Tontine murder thriller?
“
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DNA AND BLOCKCHAIN-ALLOWING YOU TO CONTROL YOUR DATA
CONVERSATION WITH DANIEL URIBE, FOUNDER OF GENOBANK.IO, USING BLOCKCHAIN TO SECURE DNA DATA Daniel, who is of Mexican descent, did his primary degrees in Mexico but studied in Stanford University where he met Condoleezza Rice as part of the executive programme. He is also a graduate of Singularity University. Both experiences formed his independent thinking – which is totally obvious in his founding of GenoBank.io, a DNA ownership legal tech kit and patent-pending blockchain technology which is turning personal control of DNA on its head.
When not studying, Daniel also worked for major tech giants such as Oracle and Sun Microsystems. He is a cybersecurity person with extensive experience in network storage; he has been working in the UNIX space since 2002. With these influences, his start-up was bound to happen – but in fact, it was his personal life that proved the catalyst.
I first heard about blockchain early on, around the same time everyone was moving into the cloud, so the concept of decentralisation was hardly spoken of, if one had a database then it was on Oracle or similar. It was centralised, it was expensive, and it took a couple of humans to maintain – not thousands of nodes."
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“At the time, the penny dropped for me;
now we could have one ledger or one version of a book. This had not been possible before. Not even the most famous books in the history of mankind have one version – there is no one version of the Bible or the Koran – but here was a technology that could offer one version, a live version, that was synchronised every 10 minutes.” Daniel had the makings of a disruptive start-up in his hands, if he but knew it. However, it took a personal accident to crystallise these thoughts into a real project. His son at 18 months had an accident where he poked his throat with a straw. As a result, he bled for three days and the hospital did some tests, including looking at his DNA.
As a result, his son was diagnosed with a rare blood disease with something very similar to haemophilia; a deletion in his genes in the 17th chromosome resulting in a condition called Glanzmann's thrombasthenia.
While it was a relief to have the condition diagnosed and named, Daniel was uncomfortable about the handling of his son’s DNA records.
“The tests were covered by medical standards, HIPAA, but what caught my attention was that my son’s raw data was not available. It was like trying to access state secrets such was the lack of transparency.”
Daniel was concerned on a number of fronts. What was going to happen to the raw data, was it going to be used for research? How many times might it be shared? Could he, as his father, ask for the data to be deleted? Might this impact his son in the future – who might hold this data and perhaps prevent him from attending university or filter him negatively out of a job? Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P11
“I wanted to know what was going on with my son’s DNA data.” As Daniel struggled to find answers to these distressing questions it struck him forcibly that blockchain could provide an answer.
“Why not store personal data on a blockchain, restrict access, and allow sharing governed by the owner of the data.” Everything begins with a salvia or swab kit. The two most popular extraction kits are DNA and RNA, with the latter gaining popularity in COVID PCR testing where RNA offers a time sensitive snapshot of a person’s antibodies.
GenoBank.io offers anyone the opportunity to store their personal DNA (or RNA) data in a digital wallet, just as one might think of a digital vault. Owners of the data can access their digital wallets through a private web browser. The information is held in a digital data room with the owner holding the personal and private keys – not anyone or anything else.
"Through the use of private keys, the owners of the data can grant access to third parties if they wish.” A core principle behind GenoBank.io is strict and verifiable data governance and that everyone has ownership and control over any data received from their saliva tube, and “moreover that they can control any experience or relationship with a third party that Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P12
might wish to use this information as a discrimination device."
Genobank.io is until now the only player in the space to use blockchain technology to secure DNA data. Their approach in leveraging blockchain technology was validated when one of Europe’s top scientific journals, The Journal of The British Blockchain Association, published their peer-reviewed research authored by Daniel and a GenoBank.io Advisor, Gisele Waters, Ph.D.
Right now, GenoBank.io is not so much interested in selling this data but controlling it.
“Using cryptographic technologies, we strive to ensure that no one should forfeit their ownership of their DNA to anyone else.” “With regard to my son’s unique DNA, I do not want to sell it to a third party, but I am not opposed to sharing it in terms of scientific research." Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P13
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The GenoBank.io roadmap defines that they will work with other businesses, in a B2B model. Their first customer, signed in December 2020, is a white label kit solution with a Mexican ancestry firm, SOMOS (somosancestria.com) based in California, and the first Latino designed ancestry platform. The company will allow individuals of Hispanic descent to explore their DNA heritage from the South American continent where there are eight identifiable specific ancestries including Mayan and Aztec heritage out of a total heritage of 68 backgrounds.
It is important that not only can individuals participate in this search, but they also still own their own data, and they can retrieve it any time.
There are eight projects that are lined up to undertake projects using DNA as a staple. GenoBank.io designs the kits to the partner’s specifications and then handles the distribution in the US.
“All of the kits have unique QR codes. For example, one tool kit being produced is a kit for survivors of sexual assault."
"Blockchain is used to keep the chain of custody of the samples – it’s not easy but it is effective."
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"Another use would be to determine biological age and another for the aforementioned COVID testing.”
Right now, GenoBank.io has partnered with another company to do the testing – in the same way as industry leaders 23andMe and Ancestry have done up until now – but while the price is around the same, the ownership of the data resides firmly with the owner and the data is governed by Genobank.io.
“This is not about monetizing your DNA; this is about securing it. If people wish to donate their DNA to scientists, this is super, but it is very much their call.” To reach Daniel to find out more, visit the GenoBank,io website, https://genobank.io Facebook https://www.facebook.com/genobank/| Twitter @genobank_io | Instagram @genobank.io find him on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/uribedaniel/ and on social media @danielruribe
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BLOCKCHAIN AND BEER
SHANE MCCARTHY IS THE MD AND FOUNDER OF IRELAND CRAFT BEVERAGES, KILLOWEN WHISKEY DISTILLERY - IRELAND’S SMALLEST DISTILLERY AND DOWNSTREAM BLOCKCHAIN BEER WHICH OFFERS PROVENANCE AND TRACEABILITY TO ITS DRINKERS. As Shane says:
“Blockchain acts like a secure database for artisans.” The two sides to his interests converged one Christmas when he returned home to Ireland from his posting in New York. He had been based abroad for a number of years, including a couple of stints in New Zealand and Australia, prior to moving to the States. While working on Wall Street he had many friends working in bars in the city. He was struck by the ‘plastic patty’ look of homogenous of Irish drinks available in New York. The drinks were all dominated by big brands and were very one dimensional. DETAIL >
A history of the last 200 years of Irish whiskey:
In the 1800s every parish had its own ale, whiskey and other local spirits. However, the entrance of the major players in the late 1800s, early 1900s had absorbed local offerings and streamlined beer and spirits into a couple of mainstream products, including the notable Jameson, Power and Roe. It had also generated domination worldwide with some 70% of all whiskey sales being Irish, which was to be reversed during the 20th century.
Irish whiskey, denoted by the extra ‘e,’ is similar to Scotch whiskey with both sharing the raw ingredients of barley, malt and water, although the ingredients in Scotch are often Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P17
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dried over a peat fire creating a smoky flavour. Scotch tends to be distilled twice, Irish whiskey three times; the more distillations the clearer and lighter the spirit.
Prohibition in the States one hundred years ago in January 1920 nearly ruined the dominant Irish whiskey market which had until then enjoyed top spot in the world and which even out-sold Scotch in England. Prohibition rocked sales negatively, followed by Gladstone’s Spirit Act of 1860 which allowed Scotch distillers to produce a lighter version of whisky that was cheaper to produce. An argument followed over what was actually whiskey – pot still or grain – which was only resolved in the 1908 commission which allowed for blends to be included. The fight was on with Scotch distillers proving to be excellent marketeers and distributors. Another blow to the industry was the Irish independence in 1922 which effectively shut them out of British markets, notably empire locations including Canada and Australia.
Combined with an export limit enforced by the new Irish government, things were looking very bleak for Irish whiskey from the 1930s until the 1980s. DETAIL >
Since then, Irish Whiskey has undergone a tremendous renaissance. From just three distilleries there are more than 35 – one of which being Killowen – and whiskey sales have grown from a low of 200,000 cases to more than 12 million in just 40 years. So not only have global sales increased, so too as the number of boutique distilleries blossomed which is what attracted Shane’s attention.
As Shane travelled home in 2014, he reflected on the monopoly of ‘Irish’ drinks abroad. “This contrasted starkly with the recent proliferation of new craft beers and spirits in Ireland. I got talking with a college friend over Christmas drinks and we came up with the idea of creating a promotional platform for the upcoming craft and artisan products.”
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“I loved the new choice and direction for the Irish indigenous drinks industry. This was in 2014 and it was a boom time for new drinks, most notably in the whiskey industry.”
Shane met with a friend, a chartered accountant by profession, who shared a love of distilled spirits. On New Year’s Eve, a mere week into Shane’s Christmas break, they decided to set up an export platform to showcase the growing numbers of craft beers and distilled beverages.
“We were not going to make the drinks, we were going to help them distribute them outside the domestic market.”
This was a learning curve for what would become the Ireland Craft Beers platform – but which in true Irish style included whiskey and gin. The new breweries and distilleries
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were all startups and knew little of exports, tax, and logistics. Together they muddled through and began to attack the overseas market.
While the platform aimed to help all comers, Shane knew he also wanted to dip his toe directly into the market and so two new ventures followed suit. One was the Killowen whiskey distillery and the other Downstream beer.
“It was natural that we would also incorporate blockchain. In its simplest form is a secure database." “It allows us to build an audit trail of everything that happens so we can bring trust to the marketplace, give consumers the data they need to make choices, from everything from the mineral makeup of the water to the malt, to the hops and to the yeast used.
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"We allow consumers to point their camera to the beer can and use the QR code to follow the journey of the beer. Provenance is very important in a world where not everything is as it seems.�
This is a reference to the rising popularity of craft beer and crafty beer, the latter a proscriptive term used by artisan producers to highlight the sneaky practice of large breweries to pretend their latest beer products are artisan. The only way to know for sure is to check the provenance of the beer. Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P22
It’s an unfair market according to Shane. Big brands can produce ‘craft’ like beers to confuse consumers; they also have prime real estate on bar counters and in off licence shelves.
“I am not saying these are not good beers, but they are not craft beers and we wanted to be able to differentiate them and support the smaller guys.
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"Everyone with a smartphone can verify the beer in front of them and choose to support them as a consequence.' Reading labels, or using QR codes, is a very much millennial imperative; it replaces the purchase of local beer or spirits from a local shop where the local farmer and distiller or brewer is known to everyone.
“There are other elements that can be tracked on the blockchain such as the carbon footprint of the product.” Creating the first run of craft beer, Downstream Beer, was done using a brewery in Meath. Shane hit gold first time out when the entire first production line was bought by a UK online beer platform. This spawned other sales for other new craft beers with leading multiples such as Marks and Spencers.
The attraction of a blockchain tracked craft beer ticked a lot of boxes. “We just grew organically which was amazing – no marketing budget or advertising – just word of mouth.”
Of course, Shane acknowledges that love of technology was not enough, the craft beer was really good and developed by experienced craft brewers.
“Having the pre-orders gave us an opportunity to really develop our products much more quickly – it eliminated much of the financial risk inherent in starting a new brewery."
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Using blockchain technology as a means to secure provenance is a nice-to-have to attract conscious consumers, but it also works as a means to counter fraud.
Many bigger brands lose millions through counterfeits and putting their product on the blockchain can reduce that fraud. Or other brands wishing to look at the environment and sustainability can implement blockchain to track and trace their bottles.
“We’re not a technology company but we use technology to make our products better. Startups need technology and innovation to make them competitive against existing brands.
We use blockchain technology to disrupt industries and bring new products to market faster.
News stories images contributed from Downstream Brewery. Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P25
WHISKY ON THE BLOCKCHAIN
CONVERSATION WITH ALEX BRUCE, CEO OF ADELPHI DISTILLERY
Adelphi Distillery Ltd has a new distillery based in Ardnamurchan, one of the farthest, most north-westerly corners of Scotland. Established six years ago, the distillery practices sustainability in harmony with local farmers. Barley, water and wood chip (for its boiler) are sourced locally and the resultant mash fed back to the local cattle. Enjoying as it does a robust ocean climate, the Scotch whisky is flavoured by the Atlantic sea producing a unique maritime twang to the single malt. To top it all, Ardnamurchan Whisky is on the blockchain, providing provenance from the tip of Scotland to a tumbler of the amber liquid poured anywhere in the world. Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P26
CEO Alex Bruce was responsible for bringing blockchain to Adelphi, copying a food supply chain project involving pigs which really impressed him. Alex has been with the organisation for almost 17 years, the last six of which were as CEO. According to him he probably has the best job in the world.
Alex fell into the drinks industry from college and never looked back. In his final year of university, a business and language degree, he managed to secure an overseas posting to work with Remy Martin cognac in>Paris. His career was secured. DETAIL
“You might say it was in the blood. One of my maternal ancestors was Andrew Usher, who is credited with pioneering blended Scotch whisky in the early 1800s. He was based in Edinburgh and blended the highly acclaimed Glenlivet, so maybe there was a pull I wasn’t aware of."
Working in Paris with the luxury cognac brand proved very exciting. When he returned to the UK he moved into the wine industry, and shortly after set up his own wine business with a partner. At the same time he was offered a job as head marketing in Adelphi – a dream job as he says and he could not turn it down.
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“So I left my business partner in charge of wine and went to join the top shelf.”
Adelphi Distillery was under new ownership at that time. Previously it had been founded in 1992 by Jamie Walker whose great grandfather had owned a very large distillery in Glasgow, but without the distillery it operated as a bottling company. Such was the popularity of his carefully chosen casks that his reputation had grown exponentially. By the time Alex joined in 2004, it was a small but well-regarded brand.
“It was an obvious step to look to build a distillery again such was the demand. We were selling everything we could get our hands on, but we needed to distil our own Single Malt."
Single malt whisky can only be produced under the one roof. It has to be made from malted barley and is typically distilled twice.
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“We have a wash still and a spirit still.” Adelphi’s Ardnamurchan Distillery is one of a growing handful of new distilleries found in both Scotland and Ireland. Unlike the bigger names which produce millions of litres every year for blending into whiskies like Johnnie Walker or Famous Grouse, Single Malt offers a premium.
“It also means we don’t have to produce as much as we are offering a singular product.”
The first year, they produced 100,000 litres, with subsequent years reaching 400,000 and this demand is just growing. The first time the product hit the shelves it sold out in minutes.
Adelphi Distillery has a finite production cap, dealing as it does with sustainable inputs from local farmers. The beauty of adding blockchain as a layer of transparency and provenance was very appealing for Alex.
I went, “yeah, this makes sense for us. We only have limited capacity and we want to ensure our customers enjoy our authentic malt.”
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Alex rolled out a pilot project in 2017 with a Belfast based software company called Arc-net. They funnelled all the data surrounding the production onto the blockchain.
“We listed all aspects of production onto our open ledger; fermentation, mashing, distillation etc and then we included dates, times and even personnel involved in each step of the process. There is a QR code on the back of each bottle which provides access to that data.”
Alex’s aim is for it to act as an internal ledger as well as a public one. From the early pilots, last year they launched the first Ardnamurchan Single Malt on the blockchain. Given as this happened during lockdown, tasting happened over zoom, sometimes beginning at 8am in the morning to cater for different time zones around the world.
“All 16,000 bottles have been allocated and they all sold out within a day of arriving in each country. It’s been amazing.
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“Having the blockchain provenance is very important. We are not some anonymous warehouse but a boutique, premium distillery. Even the place name of our distillery smacks of character – Ardnamurchan means headland of the great seas. We have a unique product and blockchain helps us confirm this.”
After the successful launch in 2020, Alex is planning on launching all systems data onto the blockchain.
“For example, if during the production an operator adds 5 kilograms of yeast into the fermentation process, that is documented and stored on the blockchain. Before it would be saved on paper, now it’s on chain, which means when Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs audit our distillery we can be fully transparent. Same for our customers when they view the QR codes."
We are even planning to include the suppliers of the wooden casks, the yeast supplies from Belgium, the provider of our corks and capsules – everything is recorded, everything is automated and eventually everything becomes much more simple for us.” "It is like our manta – Taste the Story – only now customers can view it too."
“
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INSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT INTO CRYPTO. WHATS HAPPENING AND WHAT'S NEXT?
CONVERSATION WITH NICLAS SANDSTROM, CO FOUNDER OF HILBERT CAPITAL, CEO, HEDGE FUND MANAGER AND PHD IN THEORETICAL PHYSICS Niclas is the co founder of Hilbert Capital, CEO and a hedge fund manager. He is the holder of a PhD in theoretical physics. He sat at the next desk to his co-founder, Magnus Holm, while studying their PhDs twenty years ago. Niclas, a native Swede, moved to the Netherlands and then London working for major financial institutions. Hilbert Capital is a hedge fund specialising in algorithmic trading of digital assets. He always liked quantitative things and emerging markets. He first became aware of crypto before 2017 but paid it scant attention to it until Magnus properly drew it to his attention. This time the combination of the technology and the fresh appeal of a new relatively unregulated market was an instant hit. He has some great insights into institutional invest into crypto, what's behind it, and what might be next for institutional money with regards to crypto.
“You could use an API to hook up to a crypto exchange and start playing with algorithms straight away. I was hooked.”
What appeals to you about Crypto Assets? I think there are two things that jump out at me.
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As a trader and hedge fund manager, there is an opportunity to make a lot of money. The combination of high volatility and otherwise immature markets creates many opportunities for investors.
The second attractive element is the technology. There is a lot of really cool and powerful stuff being built in this space and I think these technologies will lead to the creation of new industries as well as the elimination of others. Bitcoin is the poster boy for crypto, an example of the revolutionary aspect of decentralisation, without any company behind it. Even more revolutionary, I think, is the emergence of the smart contract which allows for disintermediation of traditional financial services and whole-scale automation of more or less anything that involves a transaction, be that value or data/information.
How do conservative investors react to crypto? Back in 2017 most conservative investors were certainly not looking at crypto but now many are interested.
From our perspective we try to manage this highly volatile asset in a conservative manner. For example, we don’t use leverage -, we have never deployed leverage in these volatile markets and will not do so until these markets mature. We have robust processes in this space. We put a lot of emphasis on risk management and that is important to our conservative investors. Risk management goes far beyond just market-risk management – the operational risk management is just as important, if not more important. Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P34
We know the crypto asset class is crazy – that makes it attractive – but by deploying conservative processes around that we keep everything on an even keel.
Our fund administration is based in the US, so is our banking which is subject to S.E.C regulation. And so we say to our clients- this is where you can get a real boost to your returns by only investing 5% or 10% of your capital in this space depending on your appetite for risk.
Our clients get returns orders of magnitude higher than traditional assets, but they are only risking a small percentage of their overall net worth. People find this appealing
Have you ever felt crypto was a Ponzi scheme? Never. There are lots of reasons why people might come unstuck when looking at crypto of course – including the issues around private keys; if you lose your private keys, you lose your coins. And during the 2017 ICO craze there were many shady projects using ICOs as pure money grabs, some were just some sketchily written notes in a white paper with no
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plan or no intention to execute. But because of the powerful technologies and the many serious projects in this space we were always convinced this was going to be the next big thing, despite some of the bad publicity.
For example consider the bad press offered by JP Morgan in 2017, and now that institution is heavily involved in this space and have several of the most well-known crypto companies as their clients.
Who are your clients? Typically, they are high net worth individuals family offices and institutional investors.
Aside from risk, how else do you provide support? Our investment process is very transparent, especially since we are algo-trading. We follow regulation closely and try to adopt best practices quickly.We operate using conservative investment policies.
We don’t expose our clients to worries like managing private keys. We handle all the required steps to invest in this space and our clients invest through our vehicles in the same way they would do in another traditional fund. The independent fund administrator handles the KYC/AML onboarding and so on.Our clients don’t necessarily need or want to see the process, they just need to see the outcome of the investment process and the detailed reports which we produce on a monthly basis.
We have no lock-up and a two-month notice period if they want to withdraw some capital. It is important to have a long term perspective when investing in crypto, 3-5 years or beyond. It’s just the same as investing in stocks and shares.
Why is Bitcoin compared to gold? The reason that gold and Bitcoin are often compared is that both exhibit low correlation to other asset classes – while the returns are expected to be higher for Bitcoin as it is still Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P36
beginning at a low market cap base.
(Note from editor – low correlation means an assets price action is less likely influenced by the price action in other markets, reducing overall volatility if added to the portfolio).
One example of this is should you have invested in S&P alone over four years you might have returned 68%, but if you mixed it with say 10% Bitcoin, that return would have risen to 150% - with the same volatility as the pure S&P portfolio. Such is the power of a low correlation asset exhibiting high returns.
While we are watching the bull run from the middle of 2020, we believe that there is going to be a strong market for the next 10 years or maybe even longer. At which point, when the crypto market matures and is a comparable size to other traditional assets, we think it will stabilise and act just like other traditional markets.
"The general belief is that crypto will overtake gold within five to ten years which will see the current one trilliondollar market cap surge to ten trillion." It’s important to note at the same time that some 95% of all projects in this space will fail and go to zero, and right now it is hard to tell which ones will be winners and which ones will fail.
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From our perspective we only trade the top segment in terms of liquidity/market-cap, and any failing projects tend to fall in the market cap ladder and will be excluded from our portfolio and more promising projects moves up to take their place.
However, overall, we expect to see crypto as the best performing asset class.
DeFi is of particular interest As a technologist and financier, innovation is very exciting to me. Previously we had only big centralised crypto exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance. The issue for decentralised exchanges was a lack of liquidity. Last year Hayden Adams cracked the liquidity nut with UniSwap where a decentralised exchange now delivered deep liquidity depth in many assets at par with that of the biggest centralised exchanges.
Right now, we only look at the bigger platforms, our hurdle for inclusion is a market cap of around $100 million, although some smaller assets may attract our attention..
"This space is fascinating and growing at speed."
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DEFI: IS THIS WHAT WILL DEMOCRATISE FINANCE?
ANISH MOHAMMED, TECHNOLOGIST WITH A MULTIDISCIPLINARY BACKGROUND, BLOCKCHAIN SPEAKER & CO FOUNDER OF R2LABS ON HIS VIEWS ON DEFI AND HOW IT'S SHAPING FINANCE
Decentralised Finance or DeFi - the latest buzzword in FinTech and crypto. Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P39
Anish choses to divide DeFi into three core components.
The first is the underlying infrastructure which at this moment in time is Ethereum, which also has some issues notably in the price of gas.
The second layer is derived from traditional financial instruments including automated market makers, bonding curves and other financial tools.
The third layer is the governance process or the Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) characterised by the staking of tokens and voting of the community.
“All three come together to allow DeFi to do what it is doing right now with governance being the key – without governance you’d just have pumping and dumping.”
Anish argues that in traditional finance regulatory bodies do the overseeing, whereas in the crypto world it’s the governance that fulfils that function. There is no oversight body or bodies in cryptocurrency and so the community votes with their feet.
The optimist in Anish believes it will be the community that will therefore influence the evolution of ecosystems, of protocols, to create and maintain fair, open and transparent systems. Anish stresses that transparency is the key here too.
“If you put your money into a bank it is totally opaque, you have no idea what is happening and what outcomes you are likely to get. By comparison in DeFI you can see how you will be rewarded based on the protocol; the processes are auditable, and the ecosystem is largely transparent. The barrier to looking under the financial hood has been broken by DeFI.”
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Anish is hopeful. He believes that, especially once the disputes die down,
DeFi will look to democratise access to finance for everyone. “One of the things I am looking forward to is when the underlying layer, Ethereum, gets to a point where it can handle the traffic.
Ethereum currently is a bit like Uber drivers in Bangalore; when the traffic gets heavy, they put up their prices. Unless you pay higher fees, your trade won’t go through. Worst case the outcome is more like having a limited supply of bread, you join the long queue but by the time to get to the shopkeeper, there is no bread left and the shop closes down.
“This is the situation right now. We don’t have the ability to process trades but when the throughput is good enough then it’s a game changer; no traffic jams, no surge prices in Uber and people allowed access to finance without needing a bank account.”
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Despite Ethereum’s traffic jams, Anish is still relatively upbeat with solutions coming forward such as sharding and rollups. In simple terms sharding is akin to doing date queries or spot checking queues whereas rollups only involve checking the topmost transaction. Then there are Zero Knowledge Rollups or ZK rollups which Anish explains by saying - Zero knowledge proof is like you see someone in a room with only one door, yet minutes later the person is beside you outside the room without having used the door. You have no knowledge how it came to pass but the person is most definitely outside the room.
These improvements would definitely speed up throughput, according to Anish.
“You need to look at the total number of developers and the total number of users on Ethereum and that outstrips all other blockchains by a couple of orders of magnitude." "While we wait for better throughput, other contenders such as Cosmos, Polkadot and Algorand can offer solutions but their current numbers of devs, users and capital are still very tiny by comparison."
I questioned Anish about the second layer; if we are porting traditional financial instruments to the blockchain, can we improve them at the same time?
Absolutely, is his reply.
"Let’s talk about CDOs or collateralized debt obligations. When stacking multiple debt vehicles in traditional financial instruments ,the individual risk ratings are opaque.
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Even if the bundle of CDOs contains lots of risk, the producer can still tie it up and put a triple A credit risk on the top and no one is the wiser.
Using Zero Knowledge proofs, we can use math to prove or disprove if the CDO is actually a triple A rating or not. It’s not up for negotiation". There is no buddy buddy system where I scratch your back and you scratch mine, nothing like this can happen between a smart contract and an oracle.
"Smart contracts and Oracles don’t have emotions. Right now, a very small minority of people make decisions for the 7.5 billion people living on this planet and the decisions only favour the tiny minority, that is not fair.” Anish argues that having an efficient protocol with governance would make the cost of doing transactions on the blockchain very cheap with much less friction.
“You just need to push a button.”
How can we ensure we get good governance? “Humans as a species have been evolving, mostly positively. We learn from our mistakes and I believe we will reach a place where we will have much better mechanisms in place. I don’t see us going backwards – I think that is a low probability.”
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CONVERSATIONS WITH BLOCKCHAIN INVESTORS: BLOCKCHAIN FOUNDERS FUND
ALY MADHAVJI, CEO AND FOUNDER OF BLOCKCHAIN FOUNDERS FUND ON WHAT THEY LOOK FOR AND HOW THEY FIND THEIR STARTUPS Aly’s criteria for investing in start-ups is a strong team, good product and where possible, existing revenues.
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Investments tend to between $50,000 and $200,000. Currently there are 30 plus companies in his Scalex start-up programme, where investment is only an initial part of the support.
“We are extremely hands-on with our companies. Firstly, we look at their strategy and secondly their product market fit. We use our data science team to help early stage sales. Finally, we help the companies become investment ready.
“To our mind there is no point putting 10 CEOs into a room to talk about filling sales funnels when they might all come from different industries. How can you compare music tech to agri tech for example? It is not the same thing at all.”
Instead Aly prefers to be hyper targeted, figuring out the sweet spot for each company, and using automation to scale the companies. At the same time, the team is evaluating which investor will work for each start-up at a strategic level.
“Each start-up has to figure out and learn from their customers. Even if you have been an expert in your industry for 25 years you still won’t know every nuance of why customers buy your product and what would really add more value to them”. So, this is where customer discussions are really important, creating feedback loops and surveys so in turn we can figure out how to target specific customers that are more likely to purchase their product or use their solution.
“In this regard, our data science team is really beneficial. They are experts at hyper targeting leads for essentially anything; they examine leads, funnels and processes which in turn generate results.”
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Aly is insistent that all the companies in the programme are armed with goals and milestones.
“These are critical, but they can be short term, say six months, and we make them achievable and quantifiable.”
In such an example, a company might have 5k in monthly recurring revenue, and the CEO is tasked with getting that figure to 20k. The CEO would determine in what time frame the new revenues would be achieved, again perhaps over a two-month period. All goals are agreed with the CEO with advice given on how to achieve the goals. For example, if a single customer’s sales are generating $5000, then three new customers of similar value are needed. If the sales team can close 10% of all leads and 20% of prospects become leads, then a target number of 150 prospects is required. Then it’s a numbers game, split test, analyse, optimize, repeat. This scientific approach is led by the data science team, thereby creating meaningful and again achievable goals.
The data science team is also on hand to advise on the best ways to target such prospects, whether across social media, email, advertising or other avenues. The team is very skilled at customising leads, bringing together a lot of the information that necessary to do this very effectively.
Right now BFF is purely emerging tech, with some 60% of projects in the blockchain space.
While Aly has blockchain as his core focus, he believes combining this technology with other powerful new tech is the killer approach as it has the potential to be impactful across industries for unique pain points. “We’ll always offer advice regardless and sometimes we ask them to join our programme – we really want to build the ecosystem.” Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P46
“Blockchain is powerful, but combine it with AI, ML and big data and all of a sudden it explodes exponentially.” Finding the start-ups is a mixture of both inbound and outbound contacts. As BFF has a global presence, many companies approach him.
Much of their work involves speaking and judging at conferences, hackathons, competitions and as a result they meet a lot of very bright start-ups.
Gender balance is also an issue for BFF. There are fewer female founders in emerging tech and especially in blockchain.
“The returns from female founders are very strong – so it’s about merit not just optics.” Aly is slow to name his most exciting projects as he points out they have projects in health tech, fitness tech, music tech, media tech and entertainment tech. Upon some pressuring, he does name Splinterlands as his number one blockchain game, Baanx, a neo bank in Europe, Jauntin which recently launched Underwing as the lowest cost health services product in the U.S., and Beatdapp in music & entertainment; the latter company was just ranked in the top 20 music tech companies by Crunchbase.
With regard to duds, while it happens, Aly maintains the due diligence performed by BFF mostly minimises risk. There are 90 different areas that each start-up needs to address before they can convince BFF to let them join the team.
A coachable CEO makes a huge difference to possible outcomes.
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Any startups wishing to contact Aly should reach out on Twitter or Linkedin. On the website (www.blockchainff.com) there are simple forms for entrepreneurs looking for investment or to join the venture programme, these questions help the team fast-track the decision making process. And you should expect a response within a couple weeks, the site states.
“We do actually review 100% of all forms and respond to everyone.�
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JOINING AN ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME: WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
NATALIE PRINGLE, CMS EQUIP, TECH ACCELERATOR PROGRAMME, ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST LEGAL ACCELERATORS. CMS equIP was founded to provide high growth start-ups with access to discounted legal advice and support. CMS equIP has worked with more than 150 start-ups within the technology sector and has now expanded to 27 jurisdictions worldwide.
They give us some advice about how startups can best prepare to be accepted by the accelerator of their choice. From CMS:
Accelerator programmes are an excellent way for early stage early-stage, growth-driven companies to establish a strong support network and gain education, mentorship and in some cases, financing.
The aim of an accelerator program is to aid an entrepreneur to grow as fast as possible within a short period of time, however a brilliant idea on its own is not a shortcut to this club. There are 100s of accelerator programmes to choose from. It is up to the founder to research success stories to ensure that they are posturing themselves to be in the best position possible to be accepted onto the programme.
The accelerator you choose is likely to be influenced by the duration and rigour of the application process.
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Questions you should be asking are whether the programme offers help in the short term which you need to refine your idea in the long term (e.g. do you need access to a seasoned code developer or someone with a shrewd marketing acumen?). This covers a few points which may help you secure a coveted place at a desired accelerator programme.
Reality check. Nothing is more attractive to an accelerator than grounded-ness and vision, but neither is exclusive nor a substitute for a precisely thought through presentation plan.
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Your business plan will be reviewed by individuals from a variety of backgrounds so it must be simple and unambiguous (close all loops on questions that may arise by pre-empting them).
Be realistic about your metrics and growth plans so that it is easy to see how you your start-up will get from no revenue to seed, to Series A and so on.
If your business plan can quantify metrics, this allows readers to fully understand how they can best support you through the accelerator and the introductions which would be most useful. Accelerators want to make sure that they are attracting the best fit for their cohorts so be prepared to be transparent yet balanced about your current expertise and shortcomings.
Be a self-starter and curate a team of advisors and board members. In the early stages of growing a start-up, it can be difficult to establish the likelihood of success when there is limited information available on customer acquisition, revenues and profitability.
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Having a team of established entrepreneurs and experienced board members supporting your start-ups provides validation and shows that they consider the business worthy of their support. Aim to demonstrate a plethora of support for your start-up.
A company that has secured grant funding or backing from other accelerator programmes, is an excellent indicator to getting noticed by the accelerator you wish to join. Have a game plan to show investment readiness. One of the easiest ways to demonstrate your commitment to the start-up is by demonstrating how deeply you have invested in the relationship with your cofounder, be it legal, personal or professional. Quite frequently, co-founders are people who do not know each other in great depth and it is likely that co-founders get introduced at an accelerator. It is important at that juncture to consider not just the creative genius or business flair of a potential cofounders but also assess their character on persistence and resilience for tough times. Although this is rarely practiced, a founder would certainly help themselves if they considered early on the specific contribution of a co-founder (with clearly defined roles/ time commitment expectations), and what it might cost the company if they decided to part ways. Blockchain Industry Review| Issue 1 | P52
Establishing written service agreements with vesting provisions at the outset shows that the founders have thought about all eventualities and are prepared to prevent potential disputes from becoming a huge drain on the company’s time, resources and momentum. A start-up that has a plan to deal with commercial and organisational challenges, and whose founders can cope with bruised egos and disagreements with swift calmness is a good look for a business starting to gain momentum.
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Prepare your cap table early on. In the early stages of your start-up, a capitalisation table is a simple spreadsheet, but it will become more complex as the company grows with investment and hires people.
Particularly where an accelerator is taking equity in a company, it is essential that you have conceptualised how much equity you envisage parting with (not just at this stage but also in the future) or better still have a dummy cap table to explain future plans. Keeping good cap table hygiene from the start reduces legal costs as the company grows and shows future investors how you got to where you are when receiving investment.
Be clear on the terms of engagement. Each accelerator programme has a slightly different focus and they often present varying terms that start-ups will need to accept upon joining. Some early stage accelerators will look to take equity in a start-up whilst others help founders to fine tune their propositions and prepare them to meet investors. With the varying degrees of control that founders may need to sacrifice when joining an accelerator, it is incredibly important that you do your research and know what is required prior to joining.
Protect your intellectual property (IP). When developing your product and value proposition through an accelerator programme, it is crucial for a tech start-up to have some background information about what constitutes their IP and how one will protect it.
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As accelerators provide an excellent platform for introductions and potential collaboration opportunities, founders should make sure they have thought about answers to these questions beforehand as no doubt accelerator interviews and application processes may well be keen to better understand this.
There is various publicly available literature online that a founder can use to self-teach oneself the basics of IP protection, and while this is not a norm, being aware about your most valuable asset is definitely a bonus. These are some practical guiding points to consider when applying for an accelerator. While each programme varies in their objectives, criteria and industry focus, you would, generally speaking, be accelerator ready if you follow these steps.
How can equIP help blockchain and crypto startups? Whilst working with some of the biggest names in financial services, blockchain, and digital assets, CMS has also developed a strong portfolio of start-up clients who are set to pave the way in this environment.
Applicants to the accelerator are invited to pitch to a group of legal experts from a range of practice areas and sector experience. This gives start-ups the opportunity to not only meet lawyers from different disciplines but to receive questions about their business covering a range of perspectives.
When assessing the suitability of a start-up for the programme, the CMS team looks at factors such as the funding which has been raised to-date, the composition of its leadership team, and areas in the growth plan where legal experts can contribute valuable insights.
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The CMS equIP programme helps blockchain start-ups and scale-up throughout their life cycle. Typically, the team will have an introductory meeting with the client and discuss how to structure their business or new product idea – this often involves drawing diagrams on a whiteboard (or discussing over video-conference post-COVID) to set out potential corporate structures which could allow for a blockchain company (typically cryptoasset- related companies) to function within the UK corporate and regulatory environment. Start-ups are provided with corporate and regulatory advice, often supplemented with additional tax and employment advice, in the form of a structuring paper which can be used by the client as a plan to become operational.
Later, as the company becomes operational, assistance is often provided in relation to drafting commercial agreements (e.g. terms of business with customers), outsourcing agreements (for intra-group and third party outsourcing), and helping to negotiate or consider terms in service agreements.
Often, in parallel, founders will be introduced to IP specialists who can advise on intellectual property issues which can typically be experienced early in the lifecycle of a blockchain company. If a company begins to operate and does not have these protections, it can sometimes find itself stuck when it has created an image and userbase, but is forced to change these and lose the capital it has built in its brand due to a lack of intellectual property protection.
As the blockchain company comes up with new product ideas, it is important to receive commercial and regulatory opinions on how the new products can function, how they can be developed, and what they need to consider with the current legal and commercial environment in order to make their product a success. It is this commercial element that tends to be most valuable to clients as it helps to direct their products going forward.
Often, blockchain companies will set up employee incentive schemes. These schemes offer shares to employees as part of their benefit package and help firms to create a more loyal employee base and ensure that the employees are more invested in the success of the business. It is easier to set up such schemes during earlier fundraising
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rounds, which is when the team will typically begin conversations about their creation.
Throughout the start-up and scale-up lifecycle, blockchain firms are usually looking for funding. The CMS equIP team have strong relationships with blockchain-related venture capital funds and can often help clients by sending over pitch documents and providing practical advice about how to structure funding rounds, how funding should be sought, the usefulness of obtaining EIS / SEIS status, and various other funding questions
With regular virtual networking dinners (including takeouts via Deliveroo!), introductions to other founders and business mentors, the CMS equIP team is proud of the support provided from start-up to scale-up, and eventual exit.
For more information on the CMS equIP, Tech accelerator programme, please contact Charles Kerrigan at charles.kerrigan@cms-cmno.com or Natalie Pringle at natalie.pringle@cms-cmno.com.
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CRYPTOCURRENCY MARKET DATA
Crypto exchange volumes, market trends and institutional investment. Data and analysis supplied by
Derivatives Volumes Reach All-Time Monthly High Derivatives volumes increased 8.6% in December to an all-time monthly high of $1.43tn. Meanwhile, total spot volumes increased by 30% to $1.19tn. The derivatives market now represents almost 54.6% of the total crypto market (vs 60% in November).
Top-Tier Spot Exchanges Gain Market Share and Set Daily Volume Record In December, Top-Tier volumes increased 32.2% to $818.3bn while Lower-Tier volumes increased 23.8% to $355.7bn. Top-Tier exchanges now represent 69.7% of total volume (vs 68.29% in November). Top-Tier exchanges also traded a daily maximum of $51.2bn on the 17th December, which represents a new all-time high. The previous record occurred last month where $46.2bn was traded on the 24th of November.
CME Had the Highest BTC Futures Open Interest in December CME had the highest open interest for BTC futures at $1.31bn (up 36.5%) followed by OKEx at $1.11bn (up 27.6%). However, on aggregate across all futures products for various cryptocurrencies, OKEx had the highest open interest on average at $1.8bn (up 0.6% vs November). This was followed by Binance ($1.7bn, down 20%) and CME ($1.3bn, up 36.5%)
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Crypto Exchange Trading Volumes As the charts below show, trading volume in crypto exchanges that Crypto Compare considers to be top tier fluctuates throughout the year and correlates largely to the Bitcoin price. Volume on exchanges Crypto Compare considers to be lower tier - as shown by the lower chart- stay more consistent- indicating what is largely considered to be high levels of manipulated trading volumes.
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Bitcoin traded into Fiat or Stablecoins This data from Crypto Compare indicates that the vast amount of Bitcoin trades are still into Tether USDT over other stablecoins and over fiat. It will be interesting to see if trust in Tether continues at this rate. 63% of Bitcoin trades are now into stablecoins or fiat, up from 61.8% in November, implying that interest is still predominantly in Bitcoin over other cryptocurrencies.
Monthly Bitcoin volume traded into Fiat or stablecoins:
In Stablecoins: Bitcoin (BTC) trading into Tether (USDT) increased 20.5% in December to 6.62mn BTC vs 5.49mn BTC in November. In Fiat: Trading into USD increased to 1.67mn BTC (up 22.4%) while trading into JPY decreased to 0.85mn BTC (down 5.7%). EUR markets increased 16.5%, while BTC trading into KRW increased 30.3%. Stablecoin markets BTC/USDC and BTC/PAX traded 120,000 BTC (up 1.8%) and 20,000 BTC (up 8.5%) respectively in December
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Monthly Bitcoin volume traded into Fiat or stablecoins (3 months): The overwhelming amount of crypto trades are between Bitcoin and stablecoin USDT Tether - indicating that large investors are far from wanting to cash out of crypto. The charts below show the slight percentage growth of trades into USD over the controversial USDT stablecoin and show that whilst trades into GBP are increasing slightly, Britain still plays a very small global role in crypto trades.
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UPCOMING INDUSTRY EVENTS
All events are UK time. All events on Zoom. To join please register at the Eventbrite link to get the login links Networking Events: Tuesday 9th Feb 4pm - Register Here Crypto Curry Club Networking and debate- DeFi and can this affect traditional finance? Thursday 11th Feb 11am - Register Here Crypto Curry Club Networking and debate on what is needed for crypto mainstream adoption Thursday 18th Feb 11am - Register Here Crypto Curry Club Networking and debate on regulation- is it helping or hindering, & how much is too much?
Other Events: Wednesday 3rd February 4-5pm - Register Here How businesses and products can easily go carbon zero and climate positive. Where would blockchain fit in? Wednesday 10th February 6-7.15pm - Register Here Blockchain – State of the Art and Opportunities beyond cryptocurrencies - debate organised by HEC Business school Sign up in French but free for Crypto Curry Club readers with Matthieu Favas, Finance correspondent at The Economist, Didier Le Floch - CTO at ConsenSys Codefi & Manuel Machado - Global Head of Blockchain Solutions at Worldline Blockchain Industry Review| 1|P Blockchain Industry Review| IssueIssue 1 | P62
BLOCKCHAIN INDUSTRY REVIEW
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