Investment company CV VC, in collaboration with PwC Strategy & and IT partner inacta, has published its new quarterly list of the largest and most important companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein’s Crypto Valley Blockchain cluster.
The survey finds that, at the end of December 2018, the cluster contained 750 companies using the distributed ledger technology that defines Blockchain. This corresponds to a growth of 121 companies, or almost 20% compared to the last count at the end of September 2018.
The data comes from CV Maps, an online directory of blockchain companies in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, which is maintained by CV VC.
20% of the global market in Switzerland and Liechtenstein
‘Crypto winter’, as 2018’s severe market reversal has been nicknamed, has affected the valuation of participating companies but not their number. The market capitalization of the top 50 dropped from $44 billion to $20 billion in Q4 2018, a decrease of 55%. Most cryptocurrencies worldwide lost value during this period. The global crypto market according to Coinmarketcap was valued at the end of 2018 at $130 billion. The Crypto Valley Top 50 accounts for nearly 20% of this market.
On average, the top 50 companies are valued at $400 million each. Excluding the five largest, the average figure is still $365million; a sign that concentration is relatively low. The average valuation of all 750 companies was estimated at $27 million. Four unicorns – startups valued at over $1billion – are present in Crypto Valley: Ethereum, Bitmain, Dfinity and Cardano.
Around 420 people work in Switzerland and Liechtenstein in the 50 largest blockchain companies. Overall, the industry employs more than 3,300 people, most of them in the area between Zug and Zurich. The survey finds that it is business as usual for many companies despite the collapse in value on the crypto exchanges.
While over half of Blockchain companies are based in the canton of Zug, Crypto Valley extends to many other Swiss cantons: 42 are now in Geneva and 39 in Ticino. Switzerland’s neighbouring microstate of Liechtenstein registers 38 crypto companies according to CV Maps. There are no entries in the blockchain register yet from Appenzell, Innerrhoden, Glarus, Jura and Obwalden.
15 new companies in the Top 50
Compared to the previous quarter, 15 companies entered the top 50 in the fourth quarter:
Sygnum, HDAC, ICON, 4ARTechnologies, WPP Energy, Nexo, ODEM, Mt. Pelerin, Saga, Boscoin, Utopiamusic, Santiment, Quant Network, TokenPay Swiss und Zulu Republic.
The second report on the Crypto Valley’s Top 50 contains a challenger list. According to CV VC, inacta and PwC Strategy&, the 10 startups have a good chance of making it into the top 50: ambrpay, Arca Trust, Blockimmo, Cosmos Network, Datum, Friendz, Grain, Metaco, Orion Vault, Pigzbe, PikcioChain, Qiibee, Request Network, Taurus Group, UTRUST.
In addition to CV Map’s database, sources for the quarterly Top 50 survey include company registers, crypto exchanges, media reports and LinkedIn. In cooperation with PwC Strategy & Switzerland, various valuation criteria and data were established as the basis of the survey: funding, market capitalization, number of employees, and age of company, all weighted on a scale of 1 to 10. Where no data was available, estimates were made and declared as such.
Top 50 Crypto Valley Companies
| Company Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Sygnum (New) | Sygnum is a technology-driven company that empowers financial services for the digital asset economy. It develops an integrated solution to securely issue, store, trade and manage digital assets. The company was founded by an experienced, interdisciplinary team of experts and is backed by a distinguished group of individuals and institutions. Sygnum is rooted in two of the world‘s leading financial hubs – Singapore and Switzerland. |
| Vetri | VETRI is the next iteration of the Procivis digital identity platform, which draws on the e-government platform eID+, also developed by Procivis. While the idea of anonymously matching the owners and buyers of high-quality data is not new, what is new is that VETRI delivers a solution that does not require a central business intermediary that needs to be paid for matching two parties: VETRI is a not-for-profit, open-source platform. |
| HDAC (New) | Hdac is a blockchain based platform backed by Hyundai BS&C. The platform allows IoT devices to quickly and effectively communicate, handling identity, authentication, data storage and micro-payments. Hdac will develop a new blockchain based on multichain capable of handling the scale and contract functionality required for an IoT platform, as well as bridges to Bitcoin and Ethereum to facilitate payments. IoT devices powered by Hdac will mean more actionable data to improve lives, businesses and governments. It differs from other IoT offerings by the convergence of the private blockchain and the public blockchain which creates a faster transaction speed. |
| Etherisc | Etherisc‘s mission is to build decentralized insurance applications, making the purchase and sale of insurance more efficient, enabling lower operational costs, increase transparency of insurance compared to traditional operations, and democratize access to reinsurance investments. |
| ICON (New) | The ICON project is building one of the largest decentralized networks in the world. Promotion and development of new technologies and applications, especially in the areas of new open and decentralized software architectures. In the foreground - but not exclusively - is the promotion and development of the so-called ICON protocol and the corresponding technologies, as well as the promotion and support of applications using the ICON protocol. |
| 4ARTechnologies (New) | Hundreds of million dollars are lost to art fraud each year. With our powerful image-capturing software, we render artworks forgery-proof. This new authentication standard logs an artwork’s unique fingerprint, its history and provenance on the blockchain – balancing the industry’s need for greater transparency with state-of-the-art security. |
| Ambrosus | Combining high-tech sensors, blockchain protocol and smart contracts, we are building a universally verifiable, community-driven ecosystem to assure the quality, safety and origins of products. At the Ambrosus project we aim to radically improve the global supply chains by creating a trusted ecosystem where we can reliably record the entire history of products and execute commercial transactions accordingly. We seek to enable a more secure and autonomous supply chain, improve distribution processes and allow consumers to easily see where their products come from and what is really in them. |
| Modum | Modum.io sensor devices record environmental conditions while physical products are in transit. When a change in ownership occurs, the collected data is checked against a specific smart contract in the blockchain. This contract validates that the transaction meets all of the standards set out by the sender, their clients, or the regulator and triggers various actions: notifications to sender and receiver, release of goods, payment, etc |
| Smart Containers | Smart Containers develops, builds and rents out airfreight containers for medicine & food transports. We combine cutting-edge technology and IoT sensors in a logistics ecosystem on blockchain. |
| WPP Energy (New) | This platform is being created to reduce the cost of green energy to most parts of the world by transmitting power production data from wholesale renewable energy producers around the world into the platform. WPP Energy‘s own surplus global energy production will also be captured in the platform and made available for purchase. |
| Nexo (New) | Over the past 10 years, nexo has been providing instant loans to millions of people across Europe. We believe that the expanding digital world helps improve our lives. They would like to contribute by providing the World‘s First Instant Crypto-backed Loans. Nexo - enjoy your crypto wealth today without selling your crypto assets! |
| ODEM (New) | ODEM is an On-Demand Education Marketplace built on the Ethereum blockchain. The platform connects students, educators, and service providers where, together, they develop and engage in personal and group, in-person educational programs. The platform reduces costs and improves access to premium education by directly connecting educators with students and eliminating inefficient and costly intermediaries. |
| Mt. Pelerin (New) | Unlike traditional banks, MtPelerin won‘t use your money to invest for our own profit. Instead, 100% of the currencies deposited on our accounts will be kept in reserve at all time. This reserve and its movements are recorded on Ethereum blockchain, and are therefore completely transparent in a permanent and immutable way. Their reserves are visible to all in real-time, while the state of individual accounts remain confidential. |
| Saga (New) | Money is changing. Digital currencies present both promise and challenges: Who can issue this new money? How will it be regulated? What is the underlying logic and value? Saga addresses public policy concerns raised by these developments. Non-anonymous and reserve backed, Saga is supported by global subject-matter leaders. Saga sees itself as complementary to the existing financial system. |
| Boscoin (New) | Self-evolvig cryptocurrency platform. The Modified Federated Byzantine Agreement algorithm will allow for low latency transactions while being more energy efficient. BOScoin aims to overcome the technical and operational issues inherent in many cryptocurrencies. |
| Deon Digital | Deon Digital has developed a programming language and operating system to create and manage truly digital contracts, which you can use to build digitized enterprise processes and future business ecosystems. We aim to “tear down walls” not only within, but also between organizations: letting information, ideas and transactions flow freely — and exactly where, when and how they should. |
| Golem | Golem is a global, open source, decentralized supercomputer that anyone can access. It is made up of the combined power of users machines, from PCs to entire data centers. |
| Proxeus | They are blockchain entrepreneurs with over a decade experience in building successful digital businesses. They have developed their own technology allowing them to industrialize the creation of blockchain applications, powered by XES, their own cryptocurrency |
| Shift Cryptosecurity | Digital Bitbox is a minimalist bitcoin hardware wallet packed with security and privacy. Safely hold and spend your coins with peace of mind. |
| Sirin Labs | The current generation of smart devices compromises on user security. The focus is overwhelmingly on user experience, at a huge cost in fraud and cybercrime. They believe the digital economy of the future cannot tolerate this trade-off: device architecture demands a paradigm shift that enables true security, while maintaining excellent user experience. FINNEY™ devices are the first cyber-protected, blockchain-enabled mobile phone and PC. They enjoy the functionality of Android™ OS, plus a suite of cyber security technologies, giving users safe, reliable access to the blockchain. |
| Bitmain | Bitmain is a blockchain and semiconductor company, dedicated to the design and manufacture of high performance computing chips and software. They serve their customers globally with industry-defining technology – blockchain securitization, AI machine learning and more. Bitmain’s Fintech hub including a decentralized exchange is located in Switzerland. |
| Aeternity | æternity is a new blockchain technology, designed to deliver unmatched efficiency, transparent governance and global scalability. æternity is a scalable blockchain platform that enables high bandwidth transacting, purely-functional smart contracts, and decentralized oracles. |
| Aragon | Create value without borders or intermediaries. They are building Aragon because they believe decentralized organizations can solve the world’s worst problems. Aragon is a project that aims to disintermediate the creation and maintenance of organizational structures by using blockchain technology. They want to empower people across the world to easily and securely manage their organizations |
| Bancor | Bancor allows you to convert between any two tokens on their network, with no counterparty, at an automatically calculated price. Thanks to built-in liquidity, the future of user-generated tokens is here. |
| Cardano | Cardano is a decentralised public blockchain and cryptocurrency project and is fully open source. Cardano is developing a smart contract platform which seeks to deliver more advanced features than any protocol previously developed. |
| Dfinity Network | Dfinity is a blockchain based world computer network that is powerful enough to host business applications at scale. The network features a variety of innovations in the blockchain space. The Dfinity network is self-governing through the use of an adaptive network called the Blockchain Nervous System (BNS). The network is also capable of achieving transaction finality at an average speed of 7.5 seconds due to advancements in random number generation and selection. The Dfinity protocol uses Verifiable Random Functions (VRFs), BLS Cryptography and the Threshold Relay technique (powered by a random beacon) to achieve these speeds. |
| Ethereum | Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third-party interference. These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property. This enables developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises, move funds in accordance with instructions given long in the past (like a will or a futures contract) and many other things that have not been invented yet, all without a middleman or counterparty risk |
| Utopia Music (New) | Utopias mission is to reclaim the creative and economic value of the music industry. At Utopia, they setting out to transform the entire industry. To create new revenue streams, consolidate the data and declutter the admin - unlocking the industry’s full potential by unifying it all in one truly holistic space. |
| Lisk | Develop and publish blockchain applications with your own sidechains on the open-source Lisk Platform. Promotion of new technology developments and applications, in particular promotion and maintenance of new open decentralized software architectures. In the foreground - but not exclusively - is the promotion and development of the so-called Lisk protocol and the corresponding technology as well as the promotion and support of applications using the Lisk protocol |
| Status | Status is an interface to access Ethereum, built for Android and iOS. Enjoy encrypted messaging, a cryptocurrency wallet, and seamless access to DApps. |
| Tezos | Tezos is a new decentralized blockchain that governs itself by establishing a true digital commonwealth. It facilitates formal verification, a technique which mathematically proves the correctness of the code governing transactions and boosts the security of the most sensitive or financially weighted smart contracts. |
| Waves | They create the economics of free, perfect and instant. The Waves Platform is a global public blockchain platform, founded in 2016. Waves Platform’s mission is to reinvent the DNA of entrepreneurship around the world by providing a shared infrastructure, offering easy-touse, highly functional tools to make blockchain available to every person or organisation that can benefit from it. |
| Santiment (New) | Santiment is a one-stop source for cryptocurrency data sets, real-time market signals and fresh industry insights. We are dedicated to promoting clarity, transparency and trust across blockchain economies in an effort to demystify crypto and create a better future society for all. |
| Melonport | Melonport is the private company building the open-source Melon Protocol. The Melon protocol is a blockchain protocol for digital asset management built on the Ethereum platform. It enables participants to set up, manage and invest in digital asset management strategies in an open, competitive and decentralised manner. Read the Melon Protocol Green Paper for a full detailed description of how it will empower its users and evolve digital asset management. |
| Tend | TEND is a blockchain company that creates a new investment world driven by passion, purpose and meaning. It‘s for all forward-thinking, like-minded people who desire to invest their money more purposefully |
| Bitcoin Suisse | They have a long-term and ambitious vision for Bitcoin Suisse AG. To realize these goals they are building a team of highly talented people who share their vision and who are passionate about creating world-changing financial products and services. |
| Bity | The Swiss gateway to convert money into cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Buy - sell bitcoins and ethers. Introducing Bity Kiosks, the easiest way to acquire or sell bitcoins with cash. Only a phone number is required. Bitcoin ATMs are currently located in Geneva, Lausanne, Montreux, Neuchâtel, Zürich Hauptbahnhof and Zürich Hardbrücke. |
| Coreledger | The CoreLedger infrastructure creates a simple and secure platform from which to use blockchain technology. It allows users to digitize goods and services without programming effort. Thanks to blockchain technology, these assets can be securely and irrevocably transferred with immutable and unfalsifiable proof of ownership. Transactions using digitized assets decrease costs and integrate seamlessly with existing goods and services |
| Crypto Finance | Crypto Finance AG is a financial technology company founded in June 2017. The company provides blockchain-related services through its three divisions Asset Management, Brokerage and Storage. The aim of Crypto Finance AG is to facilitate the implementation of blockchain technology in the global economy through a range of high quality financial services. |
| Lykke | Lykke takes advantage of breakthroughs in crypto-technology to build a global Internet exchange with immediate settlement for all asset classes and types of financial instruments. The banking architecture is outdated and needs to be replaced. They propose an Internet exchange that uses blockchain to trade all types of financial instruments. The benefits are immediate settlement, low transaction fees, the absence of a single point of failure, and strategic independence. Immediate settlement and highly competitive pricing will lead to rapid volume growth and establish the exchange as the Internet marketplace. |
| SEBA Crypto | SEBA’s ambition is to become the world‘s first universal, fully licensed and supervised crypto bank, offering industry leading crypto-asset financial products and services. SEBA’s team is comprised of global leaders and experts in banking, financial markets, FinTech and Blockchain. |
| ShapeShift | ShapeShift is a crucial piece of infrastructure in the world of Bitcoin. From start to finish, users can exchange blockchain tokens in seconds, with no account required. No emails or passwords. No lengthy signup process. No accounts. No bid and ask orders. No friction. ShapeShift’s goal is the fastest, safest, and most convenient way to swap digital assets. |
| Smart Valor | Smart Valor is building the blockchain-based Valor-Network: a decentralized community-based marketplace for tokenized alternative investments. It enables asset issuers to create and distribute tokenized alternative investment solutions. |
| Token Suisse | As leading European provider for Crypto Asset Investment Solutions, TokenSuisse is at the forefront of financial innovation. Whether Coin Brokerage, Crypto Asset Advisory or Analytics and Consulting Solutions, their inhouse capabilities allow them to help with any question regarding Blockchain Technologies and Crypto Assets. Most importantly, through differentiation between and critical analysis of emerging blockchain technologies, their team is able to derive the implications for different Crypto Assets and as well as affected companies |
| Quant Network (New) | Quant Network is set to revolutionise blockchain technology with the development of their blockchain operating system Overledger. Overledger is not another blockchain. It‘s the‚over ledger‘ that sits on top of blockchains providing a meta-gateway. Overledger will address the major limitations of current blockchain technology and unlock its true potential. Overledger is set to disrupt industries. |
| TokenPay Swiss (New) | TokenPay has incorporated a peer-to-peer encrypted instant messaging system using algorithms to maintain private conversations when using the TokenPay wallets. All of the messages sent and received are encrypted by the proven AES-256-CBC algorithm and distributed between nodes in such a way as to prevent the recipient‘s messages from being hacked or viewed by anyone that it was not intended to, even if the hacker can view the entire network and/or run nodes of the network. |
| Crypto.com | Crypto.com, the pioneering payments and cryptocurrency platform, seeks to accelerate the world’s transition to cryptocurrency. Crypto.com is headquartered in Hong Kong. |
| Zulu Republic (New) | The Zulu Republic aims to mitigate the adoption problem, leveraging blockchain technology to create a sustainable cryptotoken ecosystem composed of individuals, merchants, and larger businesses, bolstered by enterprise-level activity and product “exports”—creating a place where people can not only make use of blockchain technology in their daily lives but thrive in the process of doing so. |
| Eidoo | Eidoo, a Ticino based blockchain startup, has officially launched the ICO Engine to allow Crypto companies and startups host and manage their token sales safely and with ease via the Eidoo mobile app. |
| Xapo | Xapo has been described by The Wall Street Journal as the Fort Knox of bitcoin storage. So if you’re looking to secure your bitcoins, then look no further than the Xapo Vault. They have developed a new standard of bitcoin security and protect your assets in the Vault so that you are rest assured that your money is safe and sound. |
You can download the complete report on the Crypto Valley’s Top 50 here.
Watchlist: 15 Upcoming Crypto Valley Companies
