The future of crypto and blockchain: Fintech 50 2022
Reported by Nina Bambysheva, Michael del Castillo and Steven Ehrlich
The cryptophiles get to grips with the realities of a bear market, but their recent triumphs should not be lost.
Record-high nine cryptocurrency-focused companies entered this year Forbes Fintech 50 list – a list of honors of the most innovative private companies in fintech. Together, these nine pioneers have raised $ 6.5 billion in venture capital, and the bulk of this has come in the last 12 months.
At the head of the herd is billionaire Sam Bankman-Peace’s cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which raised $ 1.5 billion in private funding last year alone, shifting its value from $ 1.2 billion to $ 25 billion. An increase of $ 500 million in January brought the valuation to $ 32 billion, making it the third most valuable private fintech headquartered in the United States. The Bahamas-based company follows its list predecessors Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini’s part of the customer base.
Another major beneficiary of last year’s bull run and newcomer to the list is the NFT marketplace OpenSea, where users can buy and sell all kinds of digital collectibles, whether it is art, music or games. In January, the startup was valued at $ 13.3 billion, making the founders, Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, the first billionaires in the non-fungible token craze.
Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Alchemy, whose developer suite helped build just about every major NFT platform including OpenSea, saw its valuation jump to $ 10.2 billion from $ 505 million last year (the first year on the list). Similarly, list veteran Chainalysis, which helps governments and businesses in 70 countries analyze blockchain data to investigate illegal transactions, has quadrupled its value to $ 8.6 billion since last year’s list.
Only two crypto companies on the 2022 list have not yet reached unicorn status – Ava Labs, the company behind the Avalanche blockchain, and Chainalysis’ competitor TRM Labs. While venture capitalists continue to raise billions of dollars, Forbes follow these companies closely to see if they reach this milestone themselves while the rest of the market adapts to the new “crypto winter.”
Scroll down to see the full list of the most innovative companies in crypto:
Alchemy
San Francisco, California
Sometimes called Amazon Web Services for crypto, Alchemy’s infrastructure software organizes blockchain data and makes it easier to access. Dominant NFT marketplace OpenSea uses Alchemy to display information on its website, such as who created and owned a given digital work of art. Alchemy’s other high profile clients include Adobe, DraftKings and Shopify.
Financing: $ 413 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Silver Lake, Lightspeed Venture Partners and others
Latest valuation: $ 10.2 billion
Bona fides: Alchemy’s software has been the key to the NFT explosion. Between October 2021 and February 2022, the volume of annual transactions in the chain operated by Alchemy grew from $ 45 billion to $ 105 billion.
Co-founders: CEO Nikil Viswanathan, 34, and CTO Joseph Lau, 32. They have previously co-founded the popular meeting app Down to Lunch.
Ava Labs
New York, New York
The creator of Avalanche, a competitor to Ethereum, the most popular decentralized blockchain platform that applications can run on top of. Over the past year, more than 500 decentralized financial apps have been built on Avalanche, which can process 4,500 transactions per second, compared to just 14 per second for Ethereum.
Financing: $ 6 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain, Initialized Capital and others
Bona fides: Over 2.4 million users; Avalanche’s token AVAX has a market value of $ 8.5 billion.
Co-founders: CEO Emin Gün Sirer, 50, former Cornell University computer science professor known for his research on distributed systems; COO Kevin Sekniqi, 28; Chief Protocol Architect Ted Yin, 27.
Chain analysis
New York, New York
The company’s computer platform has been used to solve some of the world’s high-profile criminal cases involving digital assets, including the seizure of $ 3.5 billion in crypto by the Internal Revenue Services Criminal Investigation Unit, announced in November, and the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack. Chainalysis now shows $ 1 trillion in transaction value each month across all cryptocurrency assets.
Financing: $ 535 million from Coatue, Paradigm, Accel and others
Latest valuation: $ 8.6 billion
Bona fides: Over the past year, Chainalysis has increased its customer base by 75% and now has more than 750 customers in 70 countries.
Co-founders: CEO Michael Gronager, 51, a doctorate in quantum mechanics who co-founded the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken before leaving in 2015 to launch Chainalysis; strategic manager Jonathan Levin, 32.
Circle
Boston, Massachusetts
Creator and co-issuer of USDC Coin (USDC), the second largest dollar-denominated token or “stable coin” in the world. Available on eight blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche, USDC is used across top decentralized financial platforms, accepted at auction house Sotheby’s and integrated into Visa’s payment network. Circle primarily generates revenue on interest earned on cash deposits and treasuries, which raised $ 85 million in 2021. The company plans to be announced via a SPAC by the end of 2022 at a valuation of $ 9 billion.
Financing: $ 1.5 billion from Marshall Wace, Fidelity and others
Latest valuation: $ 9 billion
Bona fides: Its stable USDC coin has a market value of $ 49 billion.
Co-founders: Jeremy Allaire, CEO and Chairman, and Sean Neville, Board Member. Prior to founding Circle, Allaire co-founded and led two global Internet technology companies through successful IPOs on Nasdaq, the online video platform Brightcove and the software development company Macromedia.
Fire blocks
New York, New York
Institutionally focused crypto manager serving BNY Mellon and popular decentralized financial applications Compound Treasury and Aave Arc. In April 2022, Fireblocks entered into a partnership with the payment giant FIS to give its more than 6,000 capital market customers access to crypto trading and lending services.
Financing: $ 1.2 billion from BNY Mellon, Coatue, Ribbit and others
Latest valuation: $ 8 billion
Bona fides: Growed from 100 customers in January 2021 to more than 1200 today. Transfers assets worth $ 260 billion per month.
Co-founders: CEO Michael Shaulov, 39, and CTO Idan Ofrat, 40. Prior to joining the private sector, Shaulov worked in the mobile security field for the Israeli Defense Forces’ Elite Intelligence Unit 8200, where he received the Israeli President’s honors for his contributions.
FTX
Nassau, Bahamas
One of the largest crypto trading exchanges in the world, handles around 11% of $ 2.4 trillion in derivatives traded each month. The company raised $ 1.5 billion in private financing last year, moving its value from $ 1.2 billion to $ 25 billion. An increase of $ 500 million in January led to $ 32 billion. Eager to become a household name, FTX spends hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing, registering celebrity ambassadors including Tom Brady, David Ortiz and Kevin O’Leary.
Financing: $ 1.8 billion from Sequoia, Temasek, Thoma Bravo and others
Latest valuation: $ 32 billion
Bona fides: Reached about $ 1 billion in revenue in 2021; increased its customer base from 246,000 in 2020 to 3.1 million in 2021.
Co-founders: CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, the world’s second richest cryptocurrency billionaire, and CTO Gary Wang, 28.
Open sea
New York, New York
Founded almost five years ago, this startup was an early player in the NFT market that gained momentum in 2021. It acts as a peer-to-peer platform where users can create, buy and sell all kinds of NFTs – in exchange for a 2.5% cut in each sale. Although OpenSea is facing increased competition, including from the crypto giant Coinbase, which launched its own NFT marketplace in May, it continues to dominate the NFT market with more than 1.5 million accounts trading on the platform.
Financing: $ 423 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm, Haun Ventures and others
Latest valuation: $ 13.3 billion
Bona fides: Has processed around $ 3 billion in NFT transactions monthly, and earned around $ 75 million in monthly revenue.
Co-founders: CEO Devin Finzer, 31, and CTO Alex Atallah, 30. They became the first NFT billionaires in January 2021.
Paxos
New York, New York
Founded in 2012, originally as a crypto exchange (itBit), the blockchain infrastructure provider has built a backbone for PayPal and Venmo’s crypto brokerage services that allow their customers to buy, hold and sell crypto. Societe Generale, Credit Suisse and Nomura Instinet have used Paxos’ software to settle trades directly with each other. Paxos now hopes to obtain a clearing agency license from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also issues a US dollar-backed stable currency called the Pax Dollar (USDP).
Financing: $ 540 million from Oak HC / FT, Declaration Partners, Founders Fund and others
Latest valuation: $ 2.4 billion.
Bona fides: More than 100 institutional customers.
Co-founders: CEO Charles Cascarilla, 45, founded the institutional asset management complex Cedar Hill Capital Partners in 2005 and its venture capital subsidiary, Liberty City Ventures, in 2012; Asia boss Rich Teo, 42.
TRM Labs
San Francisco, California
Assists financial institutions and government agencies such as the IRS in investigating money laundering, cryptocurrency fraud and other financial crimes by analyzing blockchain data. The tools allow customers to monitor transactions across more than one million assets on 26 different blockchains.
Financing: $ 80 million from Blockchain Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Tiger Global and others
Latest valuation: $ 600 million
Bona fides: FTX and Circle are customers; The team of 90 people includes threat finance veterans from the FBI, US Secret Service and Europol and computer researchers from Apple, Amazon and Google.
Co-founders: CEO Esteban Castaño, 31, former analyst at McKinsey; CTO Rahul Raina, 28, a former software engineer at Amazon and a member of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.
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