Crypto in the UK
There’s a lot going on
Bitcoin, blockchain, ICO’s and all things crypto have been one of the hot topics of 2017. A lot of the limelight has been focused on the ICO centres of the Cayman Islands, Singapore and Switzerland, the bitcoin mining clusters across China and the wall of institutional money entering the space in the US. It might seem like the UK is missing out on this new tech trend, but actually that’s not the case and London is developing into a great crypto ecosystem.
London has all the ingredients to establish itself as a world class crypto ecosystem. A rich and growing community of talent, drawing on London’s existing strong developer and finance communities. Plenty of potential early enterprise adopters, from banks to insurance companies to government. A flexible regulator, with several blockchain start-ups already taking part in the FCA’s regulatory sandbox. Plenty of crypto specific events, ranging from big conferences to meet-ups, allowing sharing of ideas and learnings. And finally funding, both from London’s VC community who are spending increasing amounts of time focused on crypto and from individuals and funds focused on ICO’s.
The result is an emerging wave of start-ups in and around crypto. After reading a recent blog post from Beahurst tracking 30 UK blockchain start-ups which have raised VC or angel funding, led by Blockchain’s $40m Series B earlier this year. I was inspired to dig a bit deeper into the UK’s crypto start-ups and see what I could find. The landscape in this post maps out 75 UK crypto start-ups, split nearly half and half between those developing products for the crypto space and those applying blockchain and distributed ledger technology to disrupt existing industries.
I’ve read plenty of articles recently bemoaning the fact that crypto is yet to find it’s ‘killer’ application, but looking at the UK’s crop of crypto start-ups I’m sure some will prove to be great companies.
Finally if I’ve missed you out or you’re keen on crypto & want to grab a ☕ get in touch!
