“We’re investing in about ten bitcoin startups,” Plug and Play’s Scott Robinson revealed to an audience of investors at the recent Winter EXPO.
The crowd in attendance saw a batch of fintech (financial technology) startup pitches, 11 of which had a focus on bitcoin.
Robinson runs the bitcoin initiatives at Plug and Play Tech Center, a incubator and startup accelerator that has taken an interest in bitcoin startups as of late.
Plug and Play’s place in Sunnyvale, California is also home to the weekly Silicon Valley Bitcoin Meetup, which has 397 members and meets from 18:00 – 20:00 (nearby time) every single Tuesday evening. At the expo, Robinson named bitcoin “one of the most exciting things in the valley”.
Right here is a rundown of the bitcoin startups that pitched for funding:
Bitwal
“We offer you a way to withdraw bitcoins from conventional ATMs,” said Brian Santos, CEO of Bitwal. Santos (pictured above) has developed a way to load and unload bitcoin from an ATM card.
Bitwal’s notion is to “safely load digital currency in a re-loadable debit card”. According to Santos, it has a limit of $ 2,000 per day, from 1.5 million ATMs globally. The organization plans to run as a service powered by the Ripple payments network.
Novelty Lab
Getting bitcoin is a “user pain point, and people can not locate solutions in their personal market,” said Taras Kuzin, CEO of Novelty Lab and former director at Western Union.
Novelty Lab plans to build a full operation exchange to give the next generation of economic solutions for customers and businesses. The firm has currently handled 5,400 transactions. It plans to use any funds raise to perform towards obtaining money transmitter licenses in all 50 U.S. states.
CrowdCurity
“Online bitcoin businesses are getting hacked everyday,” mentioned Jakob Storm, 1 of the founders of CrowdCurity. The firm crowdsources IT safety for bitcoin companies. This requires constructing safety reward applications with best practices and guidelines for testing.
CrowdCurity has already had much more than one hundred security professionals verify vulnerabilities. And half of its rewards have been paid out in bitcoin.”We are 99designs meets IT safety,” mentioned Storm.
BitPagos
Co-founder Mugur Marculescu started his BitPagos pitch by telling the story of Sebastian, the organization’s Argentinean CEO, and citing that his country’s currency “has lost its value 3 separate occasions”. In some Latin American nations, there is a 30 – 50% loss of credit card processing payouts by merchants, he added.
BitPagos aims to resolve this issue by accepting credit cards and paying out in bitcoin, defending users from inflation and other problems. The organization is focusing on hotels in the Latin American market place to commence.
CoinMKT
Founder Travis Skweres says that his exchange CoinMKT represents “how the planet trades cryptocurrency”. The organization trades in USD and seven distinct decentralized currencies, including bitcoin, litecoin and namecoin.
Skweres described distributed money as the “most ridiculous entrepreneurial and revolutionary opportunity.” The organization has over 13,000 traders signed up, 15% of which use real cash. CoinMKT is organizing for international expansion in “large nations that don’t have a bitcoin exchange,” according to Skweres.
PawnCoin
John Light, who founded the Buttonwood open-air cryptocurrency trading exchange in downtown San Francisco, is the founder of PawnCoin. The idea driving the business is allowing folks to have liquidity, while still holding onto bitcoin.
“What do you do when you need to have cash?” he asked. “Bitcoin is an asset with upward potential, but investors need liquidity,” he stated. PawnCoin plans to offer ID verification in much less than 90 seconds and quick money making use of a number of payment choices – thus, buyers can access the worth of their bitcoin.
Vaurum
“Buying bitcoin is fully foreign versus any other financial item,” said Avish Bhama, CEO of Vaurum. Bhama has had preceding expertise in finance, and has hedged currency at Apple.
His company is creating a system to supply the financial world access to bitcoin, as it doesn’t at the moment have a wonderful capacity to get in and out of bitcoin investments.
“Bitcoin is a monetary product with a lack of access,” he told the audience. Vaurum has already closed its initial handful of institutional buyers.
Raspberry Coins
“We constructed a tiny supercomputer,” stated Tony San, CEO of Raspberry Coins. The firm was showcasing some thing known as the ‘Microminer’, which San described as a “mobile supercomputer to mine bitcoins”.
The company has built its hardware to be much more versatile than traditional computers, as its machine “runs at the speed of raw hardware”. The firm is hoping to use its ‘power of hardware, flexibility of application’ model for bitcoin mining, and other applications, like testing Sikorsky helicopters.
Gliph
“You download Gliph, attach an existing bitcoin wallet, it’s a easy expertise,” said Rob Banagale, CEO of mobile app Gliph. The firm desires to “help bring bitcoin to the world” by way of messaging, whereby users attach bitcoin to communications significantly like individuals do with files in e mail these days.
The business is also exploring peer-to-peer marketplace ideas and identity merchandise. One particular concept, ‘cloaked email’, is currently a part of its app.
Editor’s note: Gliph iOS has given that been forced to remove its bitcoin attachment function by Apple. However, this feature is nevertheless offered on Android devices.
BlockScore
“Bitcoin is pseudonymous,” said Alain Meier, one particular of the founders of BlockScore. The firm’s solution “helps businesses make decisions” about clients by using the block chain to recognize them.
BlockScore is also implementing an API that will support to verify clients by way of dozens of public records. It will charge $ 1.10 per ID verification and 40 cents for an extra query that will make sure transactions are becoming performed by a genuine individual.
Gambit
Jay Severson, Gambit‘s founder, told the audience that he decided to start off a bitcoin gaming firm right after noticing “SatoshiDice transactions take up a lot of block chain”.
The company has an on the web actual-time multiplayer gaming platform that allows men and women to play and earn bitcoin. Customers can deposit bitcoin and make wagers on the internet site. Games like ‘Rock Paper Scissors’ and ‘Bitnopoly’ are two of the seven games offered on the platform proper now.
 
View 11 Bitcoin Startups Pitch for Funding at Plug and Play Winter Expo on CoinDesk.
11 Bitcoin Startups Pitch for Funding at Plug and Play Winter Expo
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