Venture Capital Summit Offers Innovative Ideas and Money

At Global Venture Capital Summit 2018, talks revolve around innovative ideas and the money needed to fund these ideas

From Dailyhunt.in Dec. 8, 2018

Speaking at the Global Venture Capital Summit 2018 Union Minister of Commerce and Industries Suresh Prabhu said the country will need more ideas and more capital to multiply its wealth.

The Global Venture Capital Summit 2018 kicked off in Goa on December 7. An initiative of the Departmental of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) and the Government of Goa, in partnership with the International Finance Corporation and Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, the event brought together international fund managers, startups, government officials and other key stakeholders from the startup ecosystem.
Present on the occasion were Union Minister of Commerce and Industries Suresh Prabhu and Goa Minister of Revenue, IT, Labour & Employment, Rohan Khaunte.

The Summit focused on the opportunities for investments in the Indian startup ecosystem, and showcased the diverse market opportunities and technology innovations available in the country, with discussions held around the current and future regulatory changes .

Ease of doing business increases

The context of the Summit was set by Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary, DIPP. "This event will help us discuss the opportunities available and the challenges of the Indian ecosystem," he said.

He spoke about the ease of doing business in the Indian ecosystem - including at the district level, faster environmental clearances (from 600 days to 140 days) and abolition of inter-state check posts after the introduction of Goods and Service Tax (GST), among others. "In terms of ease of doing business globally, India was ranked 133 in 2009, now we are at Rank 77," he said.

Since the introduction of Startup India in January 2016, 14,479 startups have been recognised with the Government of India. "A corpus of over Rs 100 billion is to be provided by March 2025," the DIPP Secretary said.

The Union Government has undertaken steps like the introduction of transformative measures - GST, IBC and Commercial Courts Acts, and introduction of third party and self-certification measures.

Under the Startup India programme, the Government also started a virtual incubation platform for startups to register themselves. "Before the launch of Startup India, only four Indian states adopted the startup policies. Since January 2016, 16 states have launched their own startup policies," he added.

Goa as a preferred startup destination

Addressing the audience, Goa minister Rohan Khaunte said that the state is set to become a desirable startup destination by welcoming more investments and creating more job opportunities.

He compared Goa's cultural richness with the culture of startups. "Startups have the culture to innovate, the culture of risk-taking and the culture of treating every failure as a stepping stone to success," he said. Having said that, he added, "Everyone has ideas but only few can execute these ideas."

Khaunte also spoke about how buoyant the mood in the Indian startup ecosystem was, with roughly $11 billion being invested in the country in the last year and Flipkart making a huge exit.

"The Indian startup ecosystem is set to break all records. We look at Goa being the startup capital and capital of startup investment," he concluded.

The relationship between ideas and money

Setting a context to the premise of the Summit - attracting investments -- Suresh Prabhu said, "When you talk about a startup, you are talking about a new idea, and money and ideas need each other."

He said that India will be adding another $10 trillion in the coming 15 to 16 years, and would need more ideas for wealth to multiply. In this context, the Union Minister announced that India was prepared for this level of growth and that one of the key steps in this direction was adding another 100 airports in the next decade.

Besides this, he also said that startups are the new job creators and they will greatly socially benefit the Indian society.

Prabhu announced that the Global Venture Capital Summit will be held in Goa each year on the first Friday of December.

Expert panels discuss the India story

The Summit saw a couple of expert panels speaking on topics ranging from 'Opportunity to build India as a $10 trillion economy by 2030', to discussions on 'Disrupting traditional models' and 'Innovation in India'.

Commenting on the latest technology one of the panellists, Dr Shefali Juneja, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, said, "Drones are here to stay and they will be feeding the Indian startups."

Other speakers included eminent names such as Priya Rajan of Silicon Valley Bank, investors Alok Goyal (Stellaris Venture Partners), Will Poole (Capria Investments), TCM Sundaram (IDG Ventures), Rahul Khanna (Trifecta Capital), Shweta Bhatia (Eight Road Ventures), Karthik Reddy (Blume Ventures) and Vikram Gupta (IvyCap Ventures) among many others.

Startup founders like Yashish Dhaniya (PolicyBazaar), Abhinav Jain (Shop 101), Mayank Kumar (UpGrad), Shradul Seth (Agrostar) and Venkatesh Bhat (Blackbuck) were also part of these panel discussions.

The Global Venture Capital Summit also saw the release of a report on Mobilizing Global Capital for Innovation. The report talks about the Indian Venture Capital landscape, the startup ecosystem in India and the regulatory framework in the country.

VCs at the summit said that they were interested in investing in the agritech, edutech, fintech and healthtech sectors in India.

YourStory is the digital media partner for the Global Venture Capital Summit 2018. We will be sharing live tweets and posts from the event as they unfold. Watch this space for more of the latest news and takeaways from the summit.

Source: https://m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/yourstory-epaper-yourstory/at+global+venture+capital+summit+2018+talks+revolve+around+innovative+ideas+and+the+money+needed+to+fund+these+ideas-newsid-103336936

Blockchain Technology to Reach $3 Trillion by 2030

PwC Report: Blockchain Technology to Reach $3 Trillion by 2030

From CryptoSlate.com by Shaurya Malwa August 28, 2018

PwC, a “Big Four” auditing firm, recently published research that found 84 percent of companies have either a “live” blockchain project or experiment underway.

China Primed to Lead Blockchain Innovation

The company surveyed over 600 executives from 15 countries–including the U.S., India, China, Africa and Sweden–with only 14 percent of respondents having “no involvement in blockchain technology.” (The sum does not equal 100 percent due to rounding.)

The study also found that 30 percent of respondents believe China is set to dominate blockchain development over the next five years, with only 18 percent backing the U.S.

Meanwhile, four out of five executives confirmed blockchain projects were underway at their organizations, with 15 percent of respondents having “live” networks up and running. Thirty-two percent of the firms are still developing their blockchain products, while 10 percent are running pilot models and 7 percent have “paused” research and development.

PwC cited a Gartner report forecasting a $3 trillion market value of blockchain business by 2030, with the survey recognizing ICOs and asset tokenization as a significant feature of the technology’s future.

Trust: A Compelling Concern

A vast majority of the respondents cited regulatory uncertainty and a lack of trust as the “biggest barriers” to mainstream technology adoption, with 45 percent terming it the most significant hurdle to adoption.

Steve Davies, a blockchain consultant at PwC, stated:

“Businesses tell us that they don’t want to be left behind by blockchain, even if at this early stage of its development, concerns on trust and regulation remain.”

Davies added that blockchain technology is “trustless” in nature, but companies “confront trust at nearly every turn.”

Davies noted blockchain technology presents a considerable ecosystem for companies and is unlike an “IT project,” meaning it involves put down rules, robust regulations, globally-accepted standards and perennial flexibility toward regulatory decisions.

Blockchain Frameworks Defined

Survey results are understandably dominated by finance and fintech service companies, with 46 percent respondents calling it the “leading” sector in the coming years. Other identified disruptors were healthcare, industrial manufacturing and energy.

The study also identified four “key areas” for startups and large organizations looking to integrate a blockchain-based framework into their business. These include making the business case, building an ecosystem, concentrating on user-centric design and navigating regulatory uncertainty.

According to Davies:

“A well-designed blockchain doesn’t just cut out intermediaries, it reduces costs and increases speed, reach, transparency and traceability for many business processes. The benefits can be compelling if organizations understand what their endgame is in using the technology, and match that to their design.”

Source: https://cryptoslate.com/pwc-report-blockchain-technology-to-reach-3-trillion-by-2030/

Venture capital investments in cryptocurrency startups up 316% in 2018

Venture capital investments in cryptocurrency startups up 316% in 2018

From Cryptomorrow.com by David Kariuki Nov 23, 2018

A recent report by Outlier Ventures reveals that venture capital investments in the cryptocurrency industry attained a year-over-year growth of 316% to $2.85 billion from $900 million through the three quarters of 2018.

This indicates that more startups in the blockchain and cryptocurrency are turning to more traditional forms of funding even as the number of initial coin offerings or ICOs continued to decrease and raise lesser total amount of capital especially in the third quarter of this year. Of course, the report agrees with previous reports that many startups are now using a mix model of raising capital including ICOs and venture funding.

Outlier Ventures, for instance, says that in the 119 venture capital deals completed in Q3 of this year, venture capital share was the highest in total compared to the total in other quarters this year. VCs within the United States continue to drive these venture capital investments in blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The report states that with capital investments shifting away from tech-savvy retail investors toward VCs, hedge funds and ultimately larger institutional investors, "a large growth" in (startups) new businesses and services that are enabling institutional investors to enter the industry. Those new businesses and services are coming in the form of institutional-grade trading platforms, custody providers, etc that want to solve the technical complexity and risks of dealing with blockchain and crypto such as risk of users losing private keys.

A previous report last month from market research group Diar also indicated venture capital raised by blockchain and cryptocurrency startups had increased three-fold to $3.8 billion in 2018 compared to last year's total. This amount was raised from 2,000 investors (most from U.S. based dealmakers) across 384 deals. The report by Outlier Ventures says some startups in cryptocurrency and blockchain that do not require networks (online communities) to survive, have been avoiding token generation events called ICOs because of increasing legal expenses, marketing costs and community building efforts required. Of course, a lot of decrease in popularity of ICOs has come as a result of bear cryptocurrency market as being witnessed currently. ICOs, according to the new report, raised $1 billion down from $3.8 billion in Q1 representing a 74% decline since the start of the year.

That does not mean the token is unpopular: the report says that startups still believe that the tokens are foundational to Web 3.0 infrastructure and represent the opportunity for new business models. The role of the token is also evolving beyond fund raising into a model for business innovation and could expand as a way to engage, retain and attract users. The latter is being witnessed with chat apps like Kik, Telegram and Line implementing tokens.

Additionally, according to the report, FinTech innovation around crypto and blockchain is still alive and hot. For instance, there was introduction of a blockchain phone in the third quarter from HTC. Evolution of blockchain-based mobile devices and smartphones is expected to help reduce the "leak of personal data from phones and combine secure enclave security with blockchain-based verification and authentication systems." It says that future iterations of retail mobile devices will integrate blockchains as a method to " authenticate third parties accessing private data of individuals." Currently, the new hotness is zero knowledge according to the new report, with enterprises becoming further interested in zero knowledge proofs (ZKP) that for instance enable private transactions, authentication of entries on the ledger, and the verification of claims "without necessarily requiring access to the data itself."

Banking and financial institutions continue to lead in blockchain innovations as their fin-tech programs capitalize on blockchain-based open source projects according to the report.

The author is of the opinion that reduction in volatility could have resulted from "accumulation of tokens by larger more established players and retail investors (who are) no longer panic selling." The author notes that the current bear market, which has seen the market collapse from a high of $829bn in early January to currently around $200bn, is "very unattractive" for active cryptocurrency traders.
According to the report, a lack of volatility for tokens has resulted to a drop in daily volumes from over $20 billion to slightly over $10 billion this quarter.

It says that a rise in alternative investment instruments in the market such as DARs from Citi Bank could further reduce the volume of Bitcoin futures contracts, which has already fallen this year and whose launch (CBOE's) "has not necessarily done much to positively impact the price of the token." Bitcoin futures are struggling partly because of the "heavy expenses involved in taking and maintaining positions."

The new report by Outlier Ventures does reiterate the role of and development of regulation around blockchain and crypto topics: more countries continue to make decisive regulatory determinations relating to the issue, and "forward-looking" countries have started to engage with "regional banking entities" to create a regulatory environment that captures the "vast economic gains." France, Thailand, Singapore, Switzerland and Thailand have pushed for the creation of ecosystems that enable token issuance this past quarter. Japan’s Financial Services Agency also enabled self-regulation of the industry through the ‘Virtual Currency Exchange Association. The UK, France and Switzerland are also exploring possibilities of enabling the token economy.

Source: http://www.cryptomorrow.com/

Venture Capital Marketplace to Asia with VNX Exchange

VNX Exchange is bringing its tokenized venture capital marketplace to Asia with new Senior Vice President Zing Yang.

From Coinannouncer.com By Eseandre Mordi Nov. 22, 2018

The VNX™ exchange – with operational headquarters in Luxembourg, has begun implementation of its marketplace expansion plans. Such moves by the company are aimed at aptly covering newer territories outside the European axis so that more people can have access to some form of simplified token asset trading opportunities. Hence, the exchange’s action is substantially not unconnected with the perceived need for a viable framework that would facilitate the accomplishment of the company’s innovative business objectives for the cryptocurrency setting.

Consequently, VNX has finished its organizational internal formalities for the appointment of its new senior vice president- who would oversee company affairs in the Asian region. The senior executive ZingYang would be directly concerned with the company’s new business interactions in the Asian continent, and she is expected to execute tokenized digital currency venture asset projects that would paint the VNX’s company name and objectives in a positive limelight.

Functions and objectives of the VNX digital currency marketplace

According to operational objective and roadmap tendencies, the VNX exchange is designed to support an active community of digital asset buyers and sellers, on its tokenized asset venture capital supporting platform. The company’s objectives are directed at creating an impressive liquidity structure for the venture capital front, as well as providing an effective and proven means of fund sourcing for ingenious and prospective businesses- powered on a decentralized protocol, amongst others.

With the VNX exchange services, users can successfully explore the merits of prompt digital asset trading and investments, while leveraging on the value-added services as provided by the platform development and management team. Analysts say that the VNX operation methods are very much relevant in terms of simplifying the many risks and complexities of digital asset venture capital investments. By this, the platform creates an opportunity for both the experienced stakeholders and the newbie investors, to profitably engage in the platform’s hosted services.

Note that the platform assists users in a reasonable way, by enabling risk diversifications from the initial stages of user investment. This part of the framework is important because it shares off too much concentrated risks that could results in substantial losses for the investing user.

In order to ensure the effectiveness of its efforts, the VNX digital venture capital marketplace has also entered into top-notch partnerships with cryptocurrency key players- who would help in creating a synergy that brings good results for all the collaborating firms. One of such partnerships is the VNX and NEM blockchain partnership, which was also recently agreed upon. The collaboration has been able to incorporate an ability to produce different protocols and their corresponding security tokens, which would assist businesses and organizations that are hosted on the NEM network. This achievement fulfills one of the exchange’s foremost objective, which aims at facilitating the creation and provision of tokenized assets.

The VNX founder and boss, Alexander Tkachenko, has expressed the company’s readiness to follow through with seeing to it that digital venture capital investments are given a rightful place priority in the next few years.

Zing Yang’s responsibilities as the new Asian VNX service head

The new vice chief for the Asian market is charged with a number of responsibilities that are considered pivotal to the exchange’s success tendencies (or failures) in the new frontier. Zing Yang’s primary assignments are quite specific, and this would most likely take the bulk of her concentration for the earliest periods of her tenure.

Since the VNX company operations are still very much new in the region, she is expected to basically create some high-level user to company trust, which would allow for greater public participation in the solutions that the platform has to offer.

As part of the schedule for bringing this to light, she would be working to extend VNX company operations to countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong. These are places with significant cryptocurrency usage and investments; however the scope is not intended to limit on these countries alone, in the long run.

Asides this, Yang is charged with a responsibility of creating and enforcing a local footprint for the company, as well as building up a strong ecosystem- that stands the test of time, in the Asian axis. If the company’s intentions for its newfound operation location comes to fulfillment, then the company should have established a major stronghold in the coming days.

The new executive’s appointment comes as a well made choice, considering the fact that Yang has worked extensively in investment management fields, as well as other job descriptions involving public and private equity. She is an expert in digital currency and venture capital investments among others, with several years of active participation plus reasonable contributions made. She is currently a director at the Litecoin foundation, having served in other positions in various firms such as the capital group.

For more information, visit: https://vnx.io/

Source: https://www.coinannouncer.com/vnx-exchange-appoints-zing-yang-to-act-as-its-senior-vice-president-in-the-asian-region/

Venture Capital Funding for Coinbase - $300 Million

Venture Capital Funding for Coinbase in $300M Series E Round

From VCnewsdaily.com 2018-10-30

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, has raised $300 million in Series E funding.

According to Fortune, Coinbase, the most popular cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., announced on Tuesday a massive Series E venture capital funding round that values the company at $8 billion.

The company announced the $300 million investment in a blog post, which said the venture capital funding is being led by New York-based Tiger Global, and will be used to accelerate global expansion and the offering of more cryptocurrencies.

"We see hundreds of cryptocurrencies that could be added to our platform today and we will lay the groundwork to support thousands in the future," wrote Coinbase Chief Operating Officer Assif Hirji in the post.

Currently, Coinbase only offers Bitcoin and a handful of other cryptocurrencies, in part due to concerns that many digital currencies may be securities that must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The latest venture capital funding round, which follows a $100 million round in August of 2017, is being led by New York-based Tiger Global with contributions from Y Combinator Continuity, Wellington Management, Andreessen Horowitz, and Polychain Capital among others.

A source close to Coinbase told Fortune the company will also be bringing on other investors in the near future via a secondary offering worth $200 million or more. This offering would serve as a vehicle for some employees and early investors to cash in their shares, and would not change the overall amount of venture capital funding raised by Coinbase.

The Series E venture capital funding round also points to Coinbase possibly going public in 2019. While the company hasn't discussed a specific timeline to go public, CEO Brian Armstrong recently stated he would like to run a public company.

Source: https://vcnewsdaily.com/coinbase/venture-capital-funding/thzywhvhrd

Funding for Startups in the D.C. Area Reached $50 Million in October

Funding Roundup: D.C.-Area Startups Raised $50M in October

By Kieran McQuilkin - October 31, 2018
Topic: Funding for Startups

October was another quiet month volume-wise for DMV term sheets, with just one high-value deal moving big money into the local startup scene and several around $4 million and $5 million. At least 11 D.C. metro-area startups (including Baltimore) raised a combined $50 million in funding, led by an eight-figure venture round by Bethesda data analytics company Aledade.

The biggest tech funding deal came from D.C.-based sales software company Afiniti, which quietly raised $130 million in a Series D round, valuing it at $1.6 billion and making it the metro area’s newest unicorn. Since it was founded in 2016, it aged out of our startup roundup, but was a notable capital infusion nonetheless.

A few investment groups got in on the action as well, with the opening of a $300 million fund for a District-based venture capital firm and the closing of a Vienna firm’s first outside fund of $250 million.

FYI, we cover startup funding news in the DC Inno Beat newsletter every weekday. Stay on top of who’s getting funded by signing up here. See you in the inbox.

Below are the 11 local startups that raised capital in October.

Aledade, a Bethesda-based data analytics software company that helps doctors cut costs on readmissions, raised $23 million in new venture funding. Palo Alto-based Meritech Capital Partners led the round, contributing $15 million. The new money is a continuation of a prior round, and it adds to a $23 million round late last year.

On-demand technology repair company Fixt hauled in $6.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by San Francisco-based Precursor Ventures and U.S. Cellular, with participation from Naples Technology Ventures and additional existing investors. The Baltimore-based startup previously raised a $1.4 million seed round in early 2016.

Columbia, Md.-based Zentail, which helps small retailers manage their e-commerce operations across websites like Amazon and eBay, raised $5 million. Initialized Capital led the Series A round for the 3-year-old startup, with participation from FundersClub. It has previously raised $1.2 million in seed funding.

Baltimore startup Hunt a Killer, which sells subscription boxes with mystery puzzles is seeking up to $5 million in venture capital to support customer growth and new products. It expects to have 50,000 customers by yearend. Last month, the company also announced a long-term $8 million funding deal from Clearbanc.

UMB-born biotech startup Breethe has raised at least $3.5 million of a $5 million funding round toward its quest to create artificial lungs. It spun out of the university in 2014 and is backed by more than $5 million in previous funding, including a $3 million round reported in December last year.

D.C.-based nonprofit edtech startup CommonLit is continuing its blockbuster growth with a $3.5 million grant from Google. In June this year, CommonLit nabbed $4 million in funding from backers including AT&T, Teach for America, the EPIC Foundation, Arthur Rock Foundation and others.

Bethesda-based cybersecurity startup Syncurity closed a $2 million round of investment. The new funding was led by the Maryland Technological Development Corporation, better known as TEDCO, which has made a variety of startup investments. Syncurity, founded by JP Bourget in 2014, raised an undisclosed seed round in 2014 and $380,000 in 2016.

Byte Back, a nonprofit that offers technology training and job placement to underserved populations in the D.C. area, is expanding its services to Baltimore with a $775,000 grant from TD Bank. The grant came as part of the inaugural TD Ready Challenge, which this year focused on financial security and awarded the same total to 10 organizations in the U.S. and Canada.

D.C.-based voice app creator XAPP Media raised at least $750,000 from seven investors in a maximum $2 million equity round, according to SEC filings. The company has launched and manages over 1,000 apps on Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Microsoft’s Catana. It’s no stranger to fundraising, having hauled in $11.3 million in capital since 2014, according to a Crunchbase tally.

Maryland-based AI startup RedShred was awarded a $745,000 Small Business Innovation Research Phase 2 grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant will be provided over 18 months for development and commercialization of its technology, which analyzes and produces summaries of lengthy proposal documents for government contractors, grant researchers and universities. The company previously was awarded a $225,000 Phase 1 SBIR grant in 2016.

David Adler, founder and CEO of event-planning platform BizBash Media, along with his company and family invested over $500,000 in D.C.-based startup Goodshuffle. Goodshuffle launched four years ago and makes a software tool designed for event rental, production and entertainment companies to manage inventory, track sales and streamline operations.

A pair of investment companies made moves in October as well:

D.C. venture capital firm Updata Partners opened a $300 million raise for its latest fund. The fund, which targets later-stage companies and provides growth funding, has invested in several D.C.-area startups, including real estate platform Homesnap and content creation platform Storyblocks. According to its website, the VC firm has raised $750M in committed capital and invested in more than 40 companies.

Vienna-based growth equity firm Aldrich Capital Partners closed on its first outside fund, raking in $256 million. The investment company had previously used a self-funded $50M to invest in several startups, including Cofense, which sold for $400 million this year. Aldrich partners said the fund will be aimed at companies in healthcare IT, fintech and software that are still led by their founders and haven’t yet raised institutional funding.

Source: https://www.americaninno.com/dc/funding-dc/funding-roundup-d-c-area-startups-raised-50m-in-october/

Blockchain Technology Plus Venture Capital Equals Boston's Startup Culture

Venture Capital and Blockchain Technology in Boston’s Startup Culture

From Americaninno.com by Kirill Bensonoff Oct. 9, 2018

When people think of Boston, several things typically come to mind: cravings for clam chowder, the iconic Fenway Park, and the exaggerated “BAston” pronunciation from strangers. Lately, the city that spawned companies as diverse as Gillette and DraftKings is becoming known for its vibrant startup culture that’s launching dozens of new companies each year.

This is not surprising.

Our city has twice been named the top startup community in the U.S. by the “Innovation that Matters” report compiled by the organization 1776 and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.

This fact is not lost on entrepreneurs. According to The Boston Globe, 1,869 startups are operating in Boston, and those numbers continue to increase as our venture capital scene becomes more competitive with other startup hubs including San Francisco and New York. In terms of actual investment dollars, San Francisco leads the nation, but Bloomberg’s assessment of regional startup investment found that Boston places near the top of the list in each of the last several years. This year, Boston’s venture capital initiatives jumped 15%, surpassing New York City for second place in the national rankings.

In the past, the city’s prominent universities served as a launching pad for some of the most famous platforms in the world, but those businesses typically found their way to other cities once they became popular. For instance, Facebook, which began in 2004 in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room, and Dropbox, founded by Drew Houston while he was studying at MIT, both ultimately moved to San Francisco.

Now, the combination of available venture capital and the innovative ethos promulgated by Boston’s universities is encouraging companies to stay. Therefore, as the next wave of innovation is preparing for launch, Boston is uniquely suited to meet the new demand.

The Cryptocurrency & Blockchain Movement

Just like internet startups were on the precipice of mass adoption more than two decades ago, blockchain technology is at the forefront of the innovation curve. In addition to receiving significant investment and attention from companies like Microsoft and IBM, hundreds of startups are building new platforms to meet the demands of the decentralized economy.

In 2018, nearly 700 new blockchain startups launched through Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Collectively, these companies have raised $17.5 billion this year, which is more than triple the amount from the previous two years.

Not to be left on the sidelines, several prominent venture capitalists have picked up on this movement. Andreessen Horowitz launched a $300 million venture capital focused on blockchain startups, Tim Draper has committed a similar amount to various ICOs, and Sequoia Capital prominently entered the market last year.

At this year’s Boston Blockchain Week, local venture capital firm Pillar asserted themselves as the de facto financing arm of Boston’s blockchain scene. In an event roundup, Pillar encouraged ICOs looking for funding to “Call Pillar first, obviously.”

Venture Capital Streams

In many ways, the ICO model was meant to disrupt traditional capital raising methods including venture capital initiatives.

Instead, venture capital and ICOs are operating in tandem with one another. In May, Bloomberg observed, “While ICOs were supposed to disrupt venture capital, such funding in blockchain-based companies is surging, with startups raising $434 million since December, the most ever in a three-month period.”

In general, this seems to be a boom for both industries. Venture capital firms are finding fresh relevance and entrepreneurs are afforded another opportunity to finance their platforms.

The Challenges of Change

The ICO movement isn’t without its detractions.

For starters, this novel fundraising mechanism remains in a state of regulatory limbo. Although the SEC has decided that Bitcoin and Ether, the two most popular cryptocurrencies, should not be regulated as securities, there is a broad expectation that some ICOs will eventually be classified as such.

In short, VCs are participating in a game in which some of the rules are still being written.

This ambiguity is illustrative of the broad crypto movement. It’s an industry under construction, and it can change swiftly. Venture capital firms will be tasked with keeping up with this rapid innovation and the emerging legal framework that accompanies its novelty.

Boston & The Blockchain

While blockchain sentiment can fluctuate wildly, it’s evident that the decentralized ecosystem is not going away any time soon.

Many describe the blockchain economy as the third iteration of the internet, which places tremendous scale and opportunity in the industry. Of course, like any burgeoning industry, there are likely to be an abundance of failures, and blockchain prognosticators have indicated as much.

Last October, Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, told a crowd at the ETHWaterloo Hackathon in Canada that “It is an established fact that ninety percent of startups fail. And it should also be an established fact that 90 percent of these ERC20s on CoinMarketCap are going to go to zero.”

Therefore, risk management and market maturation become critical metrics for venture capitalists.

In Boston, the prominence of blockchain technology and the emergence of a dynamic startup culture are bound to coalesce. As the first generation of blockchain platforms begin emerging out of Harvard and MIT, it’s less likely that they will flee to the other coast. Boston is offering everything we need.

Source: https://www.americaninno.com/boston/from-the-community-boston/venture-capital-and-blockchain-technology-in-bostons-startup-culture/

ICO-Funded Startups Getting a Closer Look From The SEC

SEC tightens the noose on ICO-funded startups

From DecryptMedia.com by Daniel Roberts October 10, 2018

Hundreds of startups that did token sales are finding out they’re in violation of securities law— including many that were sure they did it the right way.

During the past few months, the Securities and Exchange Commission has significantly widened its crackdown on certain initial coin offerings, putting hundreds of cryptocurrency startups at risk.

The SEC sent out a slew of initial information-seeking subpoenas at the start of 2018. Now the agency has returned to many of those companies, and subpoenaed many more—focusing on those that failed to properly ensure they sold their token exclusively to accredited investors.

The agency is exerting pressure on many of those companies to settle their cases. In response, dozens of companies have quietly agreed to refund investor money and pay a fine. But many startups that have been subpoenaed say they are left in the dark struggling to satisfy the SEC’s demands, and are uncertain of how others are handling it, according to conversations with more than 15 industry sources as part of a joint investigation by Yahoo Finance and Decrypt.

The sources, many of whom are employees of companies that were subpoenaed by the SEC or are attorneys for those companies, requested anonymity, because the SEC restricts them from discussing the matter.

ICO funding, which began in 2014, exploded in popularity last year as an alternative method to fund a cryptocurrency startup, rather than the traditional venture capital route. In an ICO, a startup sells its own digital token, typically for later use in the ecosystem the startup plans to build; buyers pay for the token in the cryptocurrencies bitcoin or ether. In the majority of cases, companies that do ICOs have not yet launched any product. Think of an ICO as buying chips for use in a casino that hasn’t been built yet.

It is hard to say precisely how many ICOs occurred during the past four years. ICO Alert says it has tracked more than 5,000 but publicly displays only 3,400 “legitimate” ones. CoinDesk, a leading bitcoin trade publication, lists only 800 in the past two years. More than $20 billion has been raised in ICOs to date, but the ICO boom peaked in January 2018. Concerns over the legality of token sales have had a chilling effect.

The core issue now for every company that did an ICO: Was its “token” a security? And if it was, did the company register its offering with the SEC, or ensure that it qualified for an exemption?

SEC sees most ICOs as securities offerings—and companies failed to comply

Many of the companies that did ICOs called their offering something else, such as a “utility token” or a “SAFT” (Simple Agreement for Future Tokens, an ICO method in which investors buy a reservation for tokens yet to be launched), but the SEC does not care about those labels. It weighs each ICO on a case-by-case basis.

In July 2017, the SEC announced that it viewed the tokens offered by The DAO, an ICO that raised more than $150 million in 2016, as securities. Then, at a Senate hearing in February, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said, “I believe every ICO I’ve seen is a security.”

Capital raising through blockchain requires compliance with federal securities laws https://t.co/IjOxjoVdfK  — SEC Enforcement (@SEC_Enforcement) July 25, 2017

William Hinman, the SEC’s director of corporation finance, provided further clarity in June at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit when he said ether does not appear to be a security, but suggested that most ICOs are securities offerings, and that, “calling the transaction an initial coin offering, or ‘ICO,’ or a sale of a ‘token,’ will not take it out of the purview of the U.S. securities laws.”

Any U.S. company offering a security must register its offering with the SEC, or qualify for an exemption. Amid the ICO boom, virtually none have registered a security offering. Thus, they must meet an exemption. The SEC exemptions include selling only to investors outside the U.S., or selling only to accredited investors, which are individuals with income higher than $200,000 in each of the past two years or a minimum net worth of $1 million.

Ensuring that investors are fully accredited requires, as the SEC spells out plainly, “reviewing documentation, such as W-2s, tax returns, bank and brokerage statements, credit reports and the like.” In other words, it involves a lot more than just checking a box.

Many companies that thought they did properly limit their ICO to accredited investors are now finding out that in the eyes of the SEC, they didn’t.

Robert Cohen, chief of the cyber unit in the SEC’s enforcement division, likens it to a spectrum. When the SEC calls up a company that did an ICO and asks how the company limited its ICO to certain investors, “Some companies tell us the name of the law firm that advised them, explain the know-your-customer procedures they followed, and show us an investor list that is limited to accredited investors,” he says. “At the other end of the spectrum, some point to a website statement about limiting the ICO to some investors, and possibly checkboxes, and that’s it.”

“The law was pretty clear”

Some of the people particularly surprised to be in trouble are those who did their ICO as a SAFT, a designation that was intended specifically to be more compliant with securities law.

But some onlookers have little sympathy. Cardozo Law School professor Aaron Wright, who co-authored a paper that questioned the legality of the SAFT model, says, “There could have been other ways they could have structured it, like selling a digital good to people who actually wanted to use it, instead of predominately to speculative investors. They could have talked to the SEC first. I think the law was pretty clear that if you sell something to an investor, it’s likely a security—folks just wanted to engage in token sales, so they just kind of flouted it.”

In December 2017, the SEC shut down the $15 million ICO of a startup called Munchee and forced the company to refund the buyers. Munchee had advertised that its token would go up in value; promises of financial returns are a red flag for the SEC.

In January 2018, the SEC shut down the ICO of AriseBank, which had raised $600 million of a $1 billion goal, for falsely stating it had bought an FDIC-insured bank. In April 2018, the SEC shut down the $32 million ICO of Centra, which had been promoted by boxer Floyd Mayweather and rapper DJ Khaled, for using “misleading marketing” and “paid celebrities” to make false claims. Last month, the SEC charged TokenLot, which called itself an “ICO Superstore,” with being an unregistered broker-dealer, and charged Crypto Asset Management (CAM) with false marketing and being an unregistered investment company.

Those are just some examples that the SEC announced publicly.

Behind closed doors, many more negotiations are underway. The SEC has gotten dozens of ICOs to refund buyers and pay a fine, simply by reaching out and asking questions.

We received a second subpeona from the SEC, again collecting information from us as investors in a U.S. company. The legal costs of dealing with these are not insignificant. We will not invest in any further U.S. deals until the SEC clarifies token rules. Pivot to Asia. 
— Michael Arrington (@arrington) September 28, 2018

When the SEC reaches out to companies that did an ICO, it is usually through the company’s law firm. The SEC requests a vast trove of documents related to the ICO. Yahoo Finance and Decrypt have obtained communication that the law firm Cooley, which represented many ICOs, sent to one client after an SEC subpoena. The attorney letter warns, “The SEC is likely examining whether [client] should be considered a security under the U.S. federal securities laws… For the purposes of this preservation hold, ‘document’ is defined very broadly.”

Such language is leading many companies to refund their ICOs rather than attempt a legal fight. As one source at a company that got subpoenaed says, “The last thing we want is a press release they put out with only our name on it.”

Refunding tokens

The Fan-Controlled Football League (FCFL), the first ICO to be listed on the mainstream crowdfunding platform Indiegogo (through a partnership with MicroVentures), is one example. FCFL raised $5.2 million last year. In August of this year, MicroVentures quietly returned the money to the initial buyers. 

There’s just one problem with refunding. If an ICO gathered the proper information on its buyers, and hadn’t yet launched its token, returning the money is doable. But for ICOs that have launched their token, refunding is not so simple.

“It’s not even really possible,” says Jony Levin, CEO of Chainalysis. “In a lot of cases people bought tokens in ICOs through exchange accounts at places like Kraken. So you can’t just send tokens back to the address you got them from, because that’s an exchange address. If ICOs are made to refund buyers, it will have to be similar to the Mt. Gox case: you make a public announcement and people have to prove they were a contributor.”

As a way to pacify the SEC, some ICOs are attempting to convert their utility token to a security token. Iconomi, which raised more than $10 million in an ICO, is one example. In a blog post this month, Iconomi wrote that its token holders, “will be able to exchange their ICN tokens for tokenized shares in a joint-stock company presented as eICN tokens. This new structure brings legal clarity for all stakeholders.”

Filecoin, Blockstack, Props, Origin, and TrustToken, the five ICOs that have listed on the platform CoinList, all sold only to accredited investors, and none have launched their actual token yet. A source close to Blockstack says the company sees its token as a utility, but out of caution, chose to treat it like a security and comply with all the relevant securities laws.

“Right now it feels like a massive canyon”

All of this SEC action may sound like very bad news for ICOs, but many in the industry have a more optimistic take: regulatory clarity will bring growth. In addition, more and more companies considering a token sale are now reaching out to the SEC proactively.

“I do think that businesses on the up-and-up can navigate through it, and that in just two or three years we’ll have clarity, and we’ll look back on this time as a speed bump,” says the CEO of a well-known tech company who has closely watched the ICO space. “Of course, if you’re a company that is dealing with an SEC subpoena, right now it doesn’t feel like a speed bump, right now it feels like a massive canyon.”

The lingering lack of clarity has driven a group of crypto companies, led by Ripple, to hire D.C. lobbyists to push Congress on behalf of the industry.

From the SEC’s perspective, there is no lack of clarity. The sniff tests are the same as they have been for decades. The SEC is applying the same securities laws to ICOs that it always applies.

“Everybody’s holding their breath for the SEC to create some kind of coin rule, and they’re not going to,” says a securities attorney at one high-profile Silicon Valley firm. “They’re applying the same laws, the same statutes, the same rules, to stocks and bonds and everything else.”

In other words, there’s even a lack of clarity around whether there is a lack of regulatory clarity.

Source: https://decryptmedia.com/2018/10/10/sec-tightens-the-noose-on-ico-funded-startups/

This story is a collaboration between Yahoo Finance and Decrypt, with additional reporting by Josh Quittner.