Cryptocurrencies are disrupting the traditional banking and financial systems. The adoption of digital currencies among traditional financial institutions and corporate companies has been growing in recent months.
Big names including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PayPal, Tesla, and others are heavily involved in the market right now. On the other hand, the underlying blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionise various industries beyond fintech as well.
The UK has recently seen a surge in the popularity of cryptocurrencies, signalling a new era of digital payment. Several companies and startups in the UK are now focusing on cryptocurrencies and Blockchain as this is said to be the next big thing in the world of fintech.
Startups including, Blockchain.com, Elliptic, Wirex, and others have secured funding from investors to accelerate their growth and applications of the blockchain technology.
In this article, we have listed the UK-based cryptocurrency companies that have received the most investment with the help of Sonovate listings report.
Blockchain
Founders: Benjamin Reeves, Nicolas Cary, and Peter Smith
Funding: £382M
Founded: 2011
Location: London
Blockchain.com provides digital wallets to buy, trade crypto, send, receive, secure, and borrow digital currencies. The company is on a mission to revolutionise the $14 trillion financial services industry.
SETL
Founders: Peter Randall
Funding: £31.2M
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Setl is building blockchain-based solutions for financial markets, asset management, and payments. The company enables market participants to move cash and assets directly between each other, facilitating market transactions’ immediate and final settlement.
Bitstamp
Founder: Nejc Kodric
Funding: £9.7M
Founded: 2011
Location: Aldermaston
Bitstamp is the world’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchange, continuously supporting the Bitcoin economy since 2011. The platform allows companies and individuals globally to buy and sell bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash.
Elliptic
Founders: Tom Robinson
Funding: £27.7M)
Founded: 2013
Location: London
Elliptic is a provider of crypto-asset risk management solutions for crypto businesses and financial institutions. The company prevents, detects, and pursues criminal activity in cryptocurrencies.
It also identifies illicit activity in cryptocurrencies, providing actionable intelligence to cryptocurrency companies, financial institutions, and government agencies.
Humaniq
Founder: Alex Fork
Funding: £3.6M
Founded: 2016
Location: London
Humaniq is a new-gen financial service with its cryptocurrency, aimed at eradicating poverty amongst millions of people living in emerging economies.
With Blockchain banking, the company is attempting to combat the global problem of financial exclusion for those who don’t have bank accounts.
Wirex Limited
Founder/s: Dmitry Lazarichev, Georgy Sokolov, Pavel Matveev
Funding: £6.3M
Founded: 2014
Location: London
Wirex Limited is a hybrid personal banking platform. Based out of London, Wirex aims to make crypto and traditional currencies equal and accessible to everyone.
The company’s app and next-gen Wirex card let users buy, store, exchange, and spend a wide variety of conventional and digital currencies quickly and securely, with no hidden fees. The company recently listed AAVE, LINK, MKR, UNI, and YFI coins on its platform.
Hiveterminal
Founder: Dejan Jovanovic, Jure Soklic
Funding: $1.5M (approx £1M)
Founded: 2017
Location: Faringdon
Hiveterminal is a blockchain-based platform that provides SMEs with fast and low-cost liquidity.
With Blockchain, the company cuts costs, automates processes, and eliminates invoice duplication to open up new sources of financial liquidity to small businesses.
SatoshiPay
Founder: Meinhard Benn
Funding: £2.1M
Founded: 2014
Location: London
SatoshiPay offers solutions for B2B cross-border money transfer and frictionless micropayment processing through its blockchain-based instant payments platform.
Last year, the company inked a deal with German bank Bankhaus von der Heydt to become the first user of the euro-backed stable coin (EURB).
Senit
Founder: Karsten Becker
Funding: $1M (approx £706K)
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Senit is a digital platform that allows users to buy, sell and trade cryptocurrencies. Senit uses stablecoin technology to minimize customer risk, along with industry-leading AML + KYC to ensure the highest levels of compliance and security for our users.
The company supports powerful management tools for Accounts, Trading, Treasury, Customer Support, Rewards, Currency Exchange, Security, and Compliance.
Parity Technologies
Founder: Jutta Steiner, Gavin Wood
Funding: £585K
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Parity aims to enable businesses and organisations to capitalise on blockchain technology and benefit from the new opportunities. The company develops software solutions for enterprises and industries to unlock the full value of decentralised technology.
Coinfirm
Founder: Grant Blaisdell , Maciek Ziolkowski, Pawel Kuskowski
Funding: £1.9M
Founded: 2016
Location: London
Coinfirm is the global leader in regtech for digital currencies and the blockchain-based financial ecosystem. The company specialises in blockchain AML (‘Anti-Money laundering’) services and fraud investigations. It also offers the industry’s largest blockchain coverage, supporting 1,500+ crypto assets including, Bitcoin and the ERC-20 standard.
Electron
Founder: Joanna Hubbard
Funding: £545K
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Electron develops distributed ledger or blockchain systems for the energy sector. The company unlocks value in decarbonising energy systems by enabling granular, market-based interactions, designed by the users themselves.
Celsius Network
Founder: Alex Mashinsky, Nuke Goldstein, S. Daniel Leon
Funding: £23.6M
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Celsius is a blockchain-based marketplace platform where membership provides access to curated financial services that are not available through traditional financial institutions. Celsius specialises in the fields of consumer lending, fintech, and financial services.
Stratis
Founder: Chris Trew, Zoltan Biro
Funding: £425K
Founded: 2016
Location: London
Stratis is a flexible blockchain development platform designed for the needs of real-world financial services and businesses. The platform offers APIs and frameworks that enable businesses to build applications.
Credits
Founder: Eric Benz, Nick Williamson
Funding: £390K
Founded: 2014
Location: London
Credits is a blockchain platform provider supplying distributed ledger technology software and cloud-based services, with tools for building secure and scalable blockchains to power enterprise and public sector applications.
Coinfloor
Founder: Obi Nwosu
Funding: £348K
Founded: 2013
Location: London
Coinfloor enables verified users to buy and sell bitcoin on an open trading floor. The company serves the diverse needs of institutional or sophisticated investors and professional traders, offering their clients access to secure and transparent exchanges to trade and invest in cryptocurrency.
Magnr
Founder: George Samman, Joe Lee, Vincent Hoong, Joseph Lee
Funding: £318K
Founded: 2013
Location: London
Magnr builds financial services for Bitcoin. The platform lets users earn interest on your Bitcoin holdings with Magnr Savings or profit from price volatility with Magnr Trading.
MatrixVision
Founder: Anthony Hope, Kyle DuPont, Marco Crispini
Funding: £155K
Founded: 2013
Location: London
MatrixVision is a SaaS company that streamlines anti-money laundering compliance. Its portal reduces Know Your Customer friction by streamlining a wide range of check results, emailed documents, Excel spreadsheets, and too many manual steps into a single, company-wide view.
Cashaa
Founder: Janina Lowisz, Kumar Gaurav, Felice N. Covelli, Celestine Vettical
Funding: £3.5M
Founded: 2016
Location: London
Cashaa is a blockchain-based P2P marketplace enabling money transfer by matching senders and receivers with cryptocurrency traders.
Vaultoro
Founder: Philip Scigala
Funding: £776K
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Vaultoro is a financial technology company specialized in digital assets and commodities trading.
SpectroCoin
Founder: Mantas Mockevičius, Vytautas Karalevicius
Funding: £77K
Founded: 2013
Location: London
SpectroCoin offers an all-in-one solution for virtual currencies in Europe. Services offered include a wide range of Bitcoin solutions, from exchange to Bitcoin e-wallet. The company builds its business policy on Bitcoin’s philosophy of making financing quicker, frictionless and flexible.
Tradewave
Founder: James Potter
Funding: £70K
Founded: 2014
Location: London
Tradewave is a web-based algorithmic trading platform for cryptocurrencies. With this platform, anyone can write a trading algorithm and backtest it for free.
Cryptopay
Founder: Dmitry Gunyashov, George Basiladze
Funding: £46K
Founded: 2013
Location: London
Cryptopay is a wallet and payment platform where merchants and consumers can make transactions with each other. The company offers crypto-wallets, debit cards, B2B payments, & investments.
BlockVerify
Founder: Paul Tanasyuk, Pavlo Tanasyuk
Funding: £37K
Founded: 2015
Location: London
BlockVerify offers a Blockchain-based anti-counterfeit solution.
Ripula
Founder: Oliver Mitchell
Funding: £35K
Founded: 2014
Location: London
Ripula is a currency-agnostic global payment and account management platform allowing real-time borderless transactions using the distributed ledger technology of the Ripple protocol.
Verity.io
Founder: Donald Jackson, Rhett Trickett
Funding: £16K
Founded: 2015
Location: London
Verity.io provides certified digital documents stored on the blockchain. The company’s rapid certification service allows organisations to start certifying their documents instantly.
Money Guide App
Founder: NA
Funding: $10K (approx £7K)
Founded: 2016
Location: Sheffield
Money Guide App provides currency conversions on the fly. MoneyGuide is a financial planning software platform, providing fast, easy and scalable solutions through its innovative configurations, including MoneyGuideOne, MoneyGuidePro, MoneyGuideElite and MyBlocks.