Ranking of the world's hottest Bitcoin and blockchain startups in 2015

In 2015, more and more investors and companies began to focus on the application of blockchain technology used by Bitcoin. High-tech venture capital giants such as Google and Yahoo have begun to deploy blockchain technology, a hot field. In response to the readers' requests, "Big Data Digest - Business and Finance Column" will launch a special series to share with you the hot articles in this field from major foreign high-tech authoritative websites.

Figure: The Winklevoss brothers plan to launch a new Bitcoin exchange in the United States called "Gemini"

The Bitcoin ecosystem is becoming increasingly diverse, with global investment giants and startups with millions of dollars in funding all trying to push the digital currency into the mainstream; at the same time, high-tech hackers are dreaming of building a new order driven by blockchain technology.

In the past few weeks, we have visited many startup presidents, journalists, investors and industry authorities in the Bitcoin field to research and compile a list of some of the most exciting startups and projects in the world.

We recorded the experts' opinions one by one and shared them with you. At the same time, we will focus on financing to see which mysterious companies are leading these projects. Finally, we locked in these 25 most ambitious startups and their projects, and analyzed their most distinctive ideas and exciting development directions in the field of Bitcoin.

25. EdgeLogic: Eliminating Diamond Thieves

Bitcoin advocates believe that the underlying "data blockchain" technology of Bitcoin can be applied far beyond the field of digital currency. For example, EdgeLogic wants to use this technology to eliminate diamond thieves by registering precious diamonds in a public ledger called "block tracking". Bitcoin's data blockchain technology can record transactions between all Bitcoin users on the network in a distributed manner (once a transaction is confirmed, it will be recorded and cannot be changed). Similarly, EdgeLogic's block tracking will record all information about these precious jewelry transactions and publish them on the Internet, which will make it more difficult to sell stolen items and conduct insurance fraud.

Lynne Kemp, CEO of EdgeLogic, told the Financial Times that she is not interested in Bitcoin itself, but in its underlying technology.

24. Blade: Lets stores accept Bitcoin payments

Retail merchant acceptance has always been a major obstacle to the development of Bitcoin: in real life, few stores are willing to accept this digital currency. So while companies like Coinbase and Blockchain are developing sales tools to make offline Bitcoin transactions more acceptable, Blade is working on third-party payments. Blade provides users with a debit card that can be topped up with Bitcoin, which can be used as a regular debit card anywhere a card can be swiped. This means that crypto fans can continue to use Bitcoin to pay, even if the merchant has never recognized the digital currency.

According to CoinDesk, Balde CEO Ed Doe was previously the general manager of the debit card division at American Express.

23. Coinapult: Binding Bitcoin to Commodity Prices

Bitcoin may be exciting and innovative, but it is not very stable. In January 2015, its price dropped 30% in a few days, and it has fallen from its peak of more than $1,000 in early 2014 to its current level.

Founded in 2011, Coinapult launched a service called LOCKS, which is designed for users who want to own Bitcoin but are worried about the risk of its value. Since its launch in July 2014, LOCKS has allowed users to bind their Bitcoin to the value of various commodities, including US dollars, British pounds, gold and silver.

Therefore, if a user buys $10 worth of Bitcoin and the price of Bitcoin doubles overnight, the user will always hold $10 worth of Bitcoin. After being tied to a commodity, Bitcoin will not increase in value due to the increase in Bitcoin price, nor will it depreciate due to the instability of Bitcoin.

22. BitPesa: Remittance business in Africa

Since its founding in November 2013, BitPesa has been featured in Bloomberg Business Magazine and The New York Times. In February 2015, the company announced that it had received a $1.1 million investment from Pantera Capital.

BitPesa is a cross-border remittance service provider based in Kenya, dedicated to helping customers "send money to Africa - conveniently and cheaply." BitPesa charges a 3% remittance fee. The service provider will first convert the remitter's Bitcoin into shillings (the name of Kenyan currency) and then remit the money to the designated receiving account.

21. Ledger Wallet: Bitcoin hardware wallet

Ledger Wallet is a French startup that raised €1.3 million from investors in February 2015, selling its wallet for €34.80.

Ledger Wallet exists for those who like to have the touch of cash payment experience. The current "wallet" used to store Bitcoin is very simple, using a public key and a private key: two sets of characters can be used to receive and transfer Bitcoin. You can save them at will, or even write them down on paper. Compared with the current digital wallets, Ledger Wallet can provide a more comprehensive choice. Ledger Wallet's hardware wallet is more like a USB flash drive. The company said that this product has achieved the "highest security factor" and can "exempt from malware attacks." Ledger Wallet also plans to use NFC technology to achieve more convenient payments.

20. Ripple: Fixing Bitcoin’s Vulnerabilities

Ripple is another cryptocurrency based on the Bitcoin blockchain technology. It is the second largest digital currency in the world by market value. Its goal is to solve many of the problems currently facing Bitcoin, such as the time required for transaction verification. Ripple does not require "mining", this new operation process was discovered by Bitcoin users who contribute data computing energy to maintain the network. All coins are already "mined", which is very convenient for remittances and can be converted into local currency after receipt. Rob Wile wrote that "many users use Bitcoin more for online payments and remittances", "Bitcoin is actually just a temporary means of transportation for online payments"

Google's venture capital fund and Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm jointly invested in Ripple, and the company's market value has now reached $100 million.

19. BTCJam: P2P lending

BTCJam is a San Francisco-based P2P lending service that matches people who need loans with people who have extra bitcoins to lend. It raised $1.2 million in seed funding in 2014, and completed more than $5 million in loans in the same year.

Founder Celso Pitt is from Brazil and believes that BTCJam has great potential in providing P2P services through Bitcoin in developing countries where loans are relatively difficult to obtain. The company has announced that it will determine the interest rate for customers' loans based on their credit scores.

18. Elliptic: Secure storage

In July 2014, Elliptic, a UK-based company, received $2 million in funding from Octopus Investments. The company provides users with the highest level of digital currency security storage. In addition to obtaining the "ISAE3402 Identification" certificate issued by KPMG (a globally recognized accounting firm), CoinDesk reported that Elliptic also purchased insurance for the Bitcoin under the company's management. Purchasing insurance means that if Bitcoin is stolen by hackers (Bitcoin hacking is very common), users will not suffer losses.

17. Coinalytics: Bitcoin Economic Analysis

Since Bitcoin's blockchain ledgers are open and transparent, we can easily obtain a large amount of ledger data for data mining. Coinalytics hopes to find valuable information in this large amount of data to guide the actions of Bitcoin enthusiasts. CoinDesk calls the company's mission "to build the Bloomberg of the Bitcoin world."

16. Circle: Making Bitcoin more real

Now Circle has become popular all over the world. In March 2014, they received $17 million in Series B funding from investors including Accel Partners and Breyer Capital.

In the words of Forbes writer Kashmir Hill, the secret of Circle is "not letting their customers know they are using Bitcoin." Circle knows clearly that customers do not want to use Bitcoin, but only want easy-to-use and robust financial products. They help customers save and transfer money conveniently, and display their account balances in US dollars. According to the Wall Street Journal, Circle also imitates many traditional bank functions, such as currency storage and custody, to ensure the security of funds on this platform.

15. Factom: Using blockchain as a widespread record-keeping mechanism

Factom hopes to use blockchain technology (the distributed ledger unique to Bitcoin) as a tool to ensure distributed data custody. This approach ensures data consistency and integrity while not relying on a single data manager.

Factom suggests that property titles could be stored as entries in a blockchain “immune ledger.” Other examples of things that could be managed with this technology include audited bills and medical records.

Developer and CEO Paul Snow told the Wall Street Journal that their goal is to "outwit government regulators" and that they hope to "one day see blockchain-based databases as a powerful tool to promote transparency in finance and other business areas."

14. World Passport: An ID document center

In the blockchain, once the data is written, it is difficult to change. If a hacker wants to change it, he must control more than half of the computers in the network. This distributed advantage ensures the consistency and integrity of the Bitcoin network.

Chris Ellis is a cryptography enthusiast who is confident in the ability of technology to keep data. He created the World Passport project, hoping to store identity information through blockchain in this project. Through the World Passport, people no longer need to rely on the country to prove their identity. He told Wired magazine, "I want to create a volunteer-based identity recognition system in which proof of my existence can be supported by the social network of my choice."

13. ChromaWay (Colored Currency): A New Way to Represent Real Property

“Colored currency” is a mechanism built on top of the Bitcoin network that allows Bitcoin to be more than just a currency by marking actual property with existing Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is useful, but like the dollar and the euro, it is just a currency. Colored currencies want to use Bitcoin to represent other things. "Coloring" means adding some other information to Bitcoin, turning it into a symbol of other things.

For example, if transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain could be used to represent company stocks, gold or real estate, then people could issue stocks or trade futures on the Bitcoin network.

From the perspective of trading actual property, Bitcoin is very advantageous compared to traditional methods. If you want to trade gold, stocks, or real estate today, the process will include a lot of tedious paperwork, such as notarization and registration.

Colored currencies are still in the development stage, but there are many related projects underway. ChromaWay and Colu are working hard to make more people aware of the value of colored currencies.

12. Blockchain: The best tool for exploring blockchain

Ben Reeves founded Blockchain in 2011, located in London, and they hope to provide users with a simple way to explore blockchain technology, such as a tool for merchants to accept Bitcoin. Bitcoin uses a distributed network instead of a central bank to ensure the normal operation of transactions. Everyone has a Bitcoin transaction ledger in their hands, and people check each other's ledgers to ensure the accuracy of transactions. This ledger is called a blockchain, which ensures the legal flow of Bitcoin by allowing every user to view it.

In addition to the exploration service, they also launched a wallet service for Bitcoin. In October 2014, they raised $30 million in venture capital, which is the largest round of financing to date. And they can see 20,000 to 30,000 new users every week.

11. Filecoin: Virtual currency based on storage space

The company has been largely invisible since its Twitter debut in October, but its investors include Y Combinator and Winklevoss Capital.

Compared to Bitcoin, Filecoin is a slightly different digital currency. In the Bitcoin system, users are rewarded by contributing computing power. But in the Filcoin system, users are rewarded by contributing storage space. This storage space can then be bought and sold, turning the entire system into a huge distributed cloud storage system.

10. DarkWallet: Untraceable Bitcoin Wallet

Although Bitcoin is anonymous, it does not mean that it is untraceable. The public nature of blockchain ledger technology means that we can permanently track the flow of every Bitcoin. Once we know who an account belongs to, it will be easy for us to monitor the amount and flow of the account.

DarkWallet solves this problem. It mixes up the bitcoins of many users, making transactions difficult to track. In a sense, it is a high-tech money laundering strategy.

Obviously, this technology can be abused by criminals and terrorists, but this does not prevent the developer Amir Taaki from using it. In an interview with the BBC, he admitted that this technology is likely to be used by the Islamic State, but at the same time he said, "You can't stop others from using technology because of your personal prejudice. We represent an open system that anyone can participate in."

This is an example of an extreme liberator, a political tendency within the cryptocurrency movement. These people believe that technology is not just a currency, it represents a possibility for re-establishing social order. Taaki is likely an anarchist.

9. Blockstream: Connecting Bitcoin to other cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin is not the only electronic currency. From Litecoin to Dogecoin, many "other coins" use some variant of blockchain technology, but none of them have achieved the widespread effect of Bitcoin. Blockstream wants to absorb the special advantages of these "other coins" without completely rejecting Bitcoin.

It uses a "sidechain" that can be hooked to the Bitcoin blockchain. In simple terms, it is a new blockchain backed by Bitcoin, just like many fiat currencies were backed by gold in the past. Assets can be converted between the two blockchains when needed.

Blockstream has raised $21 million from investors including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Yahoo co-founder, and Eric Schmidt's Innovation Ventures.

8. Swarm: Providing decentralized management

In simple terms, Swarm is a crowdfunding company. It lets the public donate to various projects, the Kickstarter of the Bitcoin world. But it’s more than that. As part of a push for distributed governance, it explores decentralization, looking for new ways for businesses and even governments to operate without any central authority, as Bitcoin does.

"The vision is to give back to the masses a power currently monopolized by the one percent - the power to participate in meaningful public life," said company co-founder Joel Dietz.

The most exciting part about it has nothing to do with crowdfunding. The company wants to use Bitcoin’s blockchain ledger to facilitate voting. Last month, the Bitcoin Foundation, an advocacy group for the digital currency, used Swarm’s technology to allow people to vote for its new board members with Bitcoin for the first time ever, significantly increasing the transparency of the voting process.

7. Gemini: Fully Regulated Bitcoin Exchange

Olympic rowers-turned-tech entrepreneurs the Winklevoss twins claim they own at least 1% of all bitcoins in existence. But they’re not about to sit back and enjoy their success: The Harvard-educated twins are planning to launch Gemini.

It will be a fully regulated, U.S.-based bitcoin exchange through which individuals and institutions can buy and sell bitcoin. The brothers describe it as the "Nasdaq of bitcoin" and will open for business once regulatory approval is obtained.

6. BitPagos: Solving currency instability in developing countries

Most bitcoin merchant tools are designed to help store owners and retailers accept the digital currency and then convert it to fiat currency when needed, but bitpagos does the opposite, allowing merchants to accept fiat currency, which is then converted into bitcoin and added to a bitcoin wallet.

Bitcoin is often touted as a boon to developing countries where sophisticated financial instruments are not widely available. Bitpagos is one of those offerings, offering residents of these countries a measure of stability – Bitcoin’s price is likely to be less volatile than their local currency (while also avoiding exorbitant credit card fees). Its CEO, Sebastian Serrano, knows this well – he’s originally from Argentina and has lived through some of that country’s periods of extreme economic instability.

5. Coindesk: Bitcoin News Site

CoinDesk is headquartered in London and had 14 employees in its early days. Although it is the only company on this list that does not directly use blockchain technology, CoinDesk definitely deserves to be in the top five of this list. It is a website that focuses on cryptocurrency news and has grown into one of the largest and most respected information sources in the industry since its launch in May 2013.

4. ChangeTip: Bitcoin Tipping

Changetip is the "love button for the web." Current financial industry fees make tipping even small amounts impractical, but Bitcoin has no such barriers. (There are still some fees when transferring Bitcoin, but they are relatively small.)

So Changetip lets users simply pay “tips” to other users on Reddit and other social media sites. You can specify an amount, or use a pre-set formula: a “beer” is $3.50, a “donut” is $0.35, a “pancake” is $5.75. It’s a way to reward quality content or contributions. What’s most exciting about Changetip is that while many uses of Bitcoin are still immature, it’s already having a huge impact, providing a cryptocurrency community like Reddit with an effective tipping culture.

It had previously raised $3.5 million in seed funding, and although it was originally free, it began charging a 1% withdrawal fee in June 2015.

3. Coinbase: Developing Bitcoin infrastructure

Founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong (current CEO) and Fred Ehrsam, Coinbase is perhaps the most well-known of all the startups in the Bitcoin ecosystem. In early 2015, it raised $75 million — the largest round in the industry at the time — giving the company a valuation of around $400 million. It then launched the first U.S.-based Bitcoin exchange.

However, exchange is not its only purpose. It also provides wallets for users to store their bitcoins, and merchant payment systems to help businesses accept bitcoins.

2. Ethereum (and Counterparty): Decentralized Applications

Ethereum is the most prominent "Bitcoin 2.0" project, taking blockchain technology beyond the limitations of currency. It wants to use the technology to build decentralized applications that can run automatically. These applications run on the blockchain, making it more difficult (or even impossible) to shut down than any single computer. Compared with other startups chasing venture capital, it has raised 15 million yuan in crowdfunding to support the project.

Another notable project is Counterparty, a similar project aimed at building decentralized applications, but unlike Ethereum it is built on the existing Bitcoin blockchain. The two companies have repeatedly traded blows, building on top of each other’s projects.

1. “Mainstream Bitcoin Infrastructure” 21.Inc

What is 21? No one except a select few knows. But that didn't stop it from raising a staggering $116 million, an industry record.

When news of the latest funding round for 21 came out, including from Balaji Srinivasan, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and RRE Ventures, president and founder Matthew Pauker told the Wall Street Journal that “there are several interesting developments in the coming weeks and months” that will drive “bitcoin into mainstream products.”

Well-respected venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said 21 is “building what they (and we) believe is core infrastructure for mainstream bitcoin.”

Hardware maker Qualcomm (which also works with Apple and Samsung) is also involved, and many believe 21 intends to embed the Bitcoin network into consumer electronics and the future “internet of things.” 21 anticipates that in five years your smartphone, your router, your laptop, and your refrigerator may all be part of the Bitcoin network.

By Rob Price

Selection and review: Shawn Zhong

Translation: Rao Qianyu, Jiang Yongyao, Helen