Bringing Digital Assets to everyone and everything: Why we invested in Ramp
Rana Yared, General Partner, Michael Lavner & Axel Mitbauer, Associates
As venture investors, we have the privilege of witnessing the advent of many new technologies, some of which have a more lasting impact than others.
However, every once in a while there is a tectonic shift, where new technologies emerge that will not only make things faster, cheaper and better — but also have a fundamental impact on our society and culture. At Balderton, we firmly believe the rise of digital assets marks one of these fundamental shifts. We have been able to watch its initial steps with our investments into Revolut, Luno (now part of DCG), and Finoa.
Even though we were early believers and were able to see our companies thrive in this category, we are still surprised by the sheer force of innovation of the digital asset world. New use cases cover a wide breadth from a digital way to collect sports cards using NFTs, to gaming, to fractionalizing real assets. In each of these cases, casual gamers and collectors can play and collect on these platforms without needing to have a view on the value of the underlying cryptocurrency, while still reaping the benefits of having full control over the digital assets they acquire.
The expansion of applications has also led to an unprecedented expansion of talent joining the ecosystem on a daily basis. Undoubtedly, this creates a virtuous circle that gives rise to an even greater number of use cases.
Ramp: If everything goes Crypto, everyone must also be able to join
However, opening up the world of digital assets to new audiences is not enough — you must also provide them with a safe and reliable way in. At the moment, buying into that universe oftentimes necessitates a cumbersome process of transferring ETH (or any other Cryptocurrency) to your account or connecting your wallet. These ETH, however, must first be bought on a crypto exchange, for which it can often take weeks to be onboarded. This is a painful process especially for those users who are still unfamiliar with Crypto. Chances are by the time you can buy your NFT, the item you wanted to buy has sold or you have lost interest in the game you wanted to play.
Ramp makes buying digital assets as straightforward as buying USD when making a purchase from your favorite American brand in Euros. Rather than having to jump between exchanges, wallets, and applications, Ramp allows users to acquire the digital assets they need inside of the application they already have open, using their preferred credit card.
Ramp streamlines this process by providing a FCA and FinCEN registered end-to-end solution with an easy-to-integrate SDK, global coverage, and taking care of KYC and AML requirements. Moreover, Ramp integrates natively with Layer 2 scaling solutions, in order to minimize transaction fees. Put short, Ramp allows platforms to easily offer digital assets to a wider audience while providing an elegant and award-winning UX. This is the reason why leading projects such as Sorare or Axie infinity, and non-crypto natives such as Opera Browser chose to partner with Ramp — and there are more to come.
The Ramp team: Combining Expertise and Diligence
From the first moment we met Szymon, Przemek, and the rest of the Ramp team, we were incredibly impressed by the depth of the conversations we had. They demonstrated deep thinking not only in terms of the technology behind digital assets but also the general market developments and the desire to build a best-in-class business around a best-in-class regulatory framework. It is no coincidence that Ramp was one of the first digital assets firms to be registered with the UK FCA.
Ramp was founded in Warsaw and we are excited to welcome the first Polish startup to our Balderton family. We see this as a further data point that world-class companies are emerging from all over Europe, and increasingly from outside the usually suspected hubs.
