In short: Insights into San Francisco’s blockchain scene
The Bay Area remains at the epicentre of the global crypto ecosystem. This week’s San Francisco Blockchain Week — promoted as the blockchain event of the year — has showcased a host of leading figures from the industry. Attendees include Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin and Naval Ravikant, the founder of AngelList. Held between October 5 and October 12, SF Blockchain Week is packed with events seminars and parties, providing a host of great networking opportunities. The week will stage several hackathons, with the three main events consisting of ETH San Francisco, SF Blockchain Week Epicenter and Crypto Economics Security Conference.
“In the past year, many of the newcomers in the space have been focused almost entirely on price fluctuations rather than the tech that started this excitement in the first place,” said Ronen Kirsh, managing partner of Dekrypt Capital, an organiser of the event. “We see an opportunity now to refocus the space on what matters, by creating a week of educational events focused on technology, and highlighting those who are building it.”
The West Coast technology mecca hosts many of the world’s leading blockchain startups, including, Augur, Blockchain Capital, Coinbase, CoinList, Harbor, Purse, Ripple and Kraken. Startups are drawn to the Silicon Valley hub by the huge talent pool and immediate access to capital to lubricate the launch of new startup ventures.
Brian Amstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, recently outlined his vision for the San Francisco exchange to become one day on a par with the New York Stock Exchange. Coinbase has more than 20 million users and has overseen more than $150 billion in crypto trading. The trusted crypto exchange has become the most popular platform for exchanging fiat currency into crypto and is poised to host a variety of cryptocurrencies. Coinbase has the potential to in the future become bigger than the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ, suggested Amstrong, creating a future reality where San Francisco surpasses New York as the preeminent financial trading hub.
“It makes sense that any company out there who has a cap table… Should have their own token. Every open source project, every charity, potentially every fund or these new types of decentralized organizations [and] apps, they’re all going to have their own tokens,” he said. “We want to be the bridge all over the world where people come and they take fiat currency and they can get it into these different cryptocurrencies,” added Amstrong.
Ripple, a blockchain-based system that allows businesses and people to quickly send low-cost payments and remittances, last week staged the SWELL conference as a prelude to SF Blockchain Week. The event featured former US President Bill Clinton and provided the startup with a platform to unveil advances to its XRapid technology. RippleNet is a global network facilitating cross-border payments to more than 40 countries across six continents while Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, XRP, exists within the Ripple protocol. XRP has a market capitalization of $16.36 billion and is the world’s third biggest cryptocurrency. Ripple is targeting a cross border payments market worth $27 trillion, according to Boston Consulting Group.
DCEX, an XRP-based decentralised crypto marketplace, opened for registration for retail and institutional accounts in the summer of this year. The San Francisco-based startup stated in a press release that it is using XRP as a base currency to facilitate “high-speed transfers” that can help investors to better take advantage of “price inefficiencies” in their arbitrage among currency pairs on different exchanges.
Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Kraken, has cemented its position as one of the world’s leading crypto exchanges after a series of recent acquisitions. Kraken is the largest bitcoin exchange in euro volume and liquidity and also trading Canadian dollars, US dollars, British pounds and Japanese yen. As the source of truth for bitcoin pricing on the Bloomberg Terminal, Kraken is at the heart of San Francisco’s crypto trading scene.
San Francisco-based Augur, a decentralised peer-to-peer oracle and prediction market protocol built on the ethereum blockchain, has been an active participant in SF Blockchain Week. Argur has hosted developer competitions and participated in the ETH global hackathon. The platform is gearing up for its first major upgrade after its launch in July this year, aimed at improving the user experience. Augur has garnered widespread recognition for its potential as a trustless, uncensorable portal to make bets on future events.
Some say Augur has the potential to disrupt the $500 billion global gambling market. While the platform has been mired in controversy after markets opened for bets on the assassination of US president Donald Trump, most user activity has focussed on major sporting events and the future price direction of bitcoin and ethereum.
Joey Krug, cofounder of Augur, is at the heart of the city’s crypto scene. He is advised by Elizabeth Stark, cofounder of Lightening Labs, an outfit described by TechCrunch as a “young, Bay Area-based startup”. Lightening is a decentralized network aimed at making it easier for users to send and receive bitcoin and litecoin without the high-cost and time-consuming process of settling the transactions on the blockchain. Serial investor David Sacks described Lightening as “one of the most important projects in crypto overall.”
Still, the Bay Area is not only home to a host of leading global blockchain startups. San Francisco is also the number one place for blockchain VC funds. According to Crypto Fund Research, 58 crypto funds are located in San Francisco alone with another 12 operating out of Menlo Park, a city about an hour’s drive south of San Francisco. Singapore on the other hand (we looked at the local ecosystem three weeks ago) is home to ‘only’ 28 crypto funds. Although the blockchain startup scene is relatively decentralised compared to non-blockchain technology ventures, the Bay Area is still a dominant ecosystem and a great place to be.
