SCI Turns Five Years Old
Five years may sound like a short span of time, but in the cutthroat environment of the startup world, months can seem like years. What more in the volatile world of blockchains and cryptocurrencies?
Five years ago in 2014, we started SCI Ventures. The technology itself, Bitcoin, had just been invented five years before, and startups working with blockchain technology only started becoming prevalent starting in 2012 onwards. The industry was very new and very uncertain. We did not have regulations, we did not have any certainty that this was going to succeed as industry. It was a very different time.
Merely surviving and thriving in this kind of environment can be considered an accomplishment. So what is SCI’s secret? Instead of trying to become a “unicorn” startup, we ended up being a “cockroach” startup. Want to know what it means to be a cockroach startup? Read more about that here in a blog post we wrote in 2015.
The road to today has been filled with many ups and downs, with many challenges. This industry does not take any prisoners — it will break you if you can’t handle the pressure. But like Bitcoin, SCI is resilient and can roll with the punches. We just keep on fighting and keep on going.
We have grown from just a handful of founders to a a few dozen bright, young (and some not so young) minds working hard to bridge the gap between the world of cryptocurrencies and traditional finance. Our services have become more focused and streamlined to achieve our goal of building a bitcoin and blockchain ecosystem in the Philippines. We have the backing of the Korean tech giant Kakao, as well as the support of our central bank and several financial institutions in the Philippines.
We have also established more recent and exciting partnerships and new investors that we believe will have a huge impact on our ability to execute our roadmap and on the industry as a whole.
Our mission has always been to provide everyone with equal and easy access to world-class financial services, cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technology. This works hand in hand with our vision of bringing financial inclusion to our fellow Filipinos. We are happy to share that SCI is right on track towards these goals. After a rocky 2018 for the whole industry, transaction volumes are steadily increasing again, new partners being signed on, and with the added bonus of the price of Bitcoin on an upward trajectory, rising along with transaction volumes and global adoption. We know we have a long way to go, but we are here to stay and keep building.
One Bitcoin, as of this writing, is US$5,720. Considering it was only $1,600 just two years ago and $200 four years ago, it is a great indicator that the technology upon which we built our business has a solid foundation and market support. We are at the cusp of a shift in the way Bitcoin and blockchain is seen by the world, both as a technology and as a currency. SCI, along with the rest of the Philippine Blockchain industry, is working non-stop to make sure that when this technology matures, The Philippines will be ready with the right infrastructure and be one of the first countries to reap its benefits.
Of course, we would not be where we are today if not for the amazing team that is the heart and soul of SCI. Some of them have been with us from the start, many for most of the last five years. Sticking it out with us through thick and thin, good times and bad times, they are the reason why we keep going.
Cheers to the next five years!
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Fun fact: Did you know that since SCI started in May 2014, bitcoin has “died” 352 times?
