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More than 75 companies in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry have raised at least $ 30 million in payroll loans from the US government.
The recipients of the loan included developer Zcash Electric Coin Company, venture firm Ethereum ConsenSys, and Rainberry Inc., the US entity acquired by Justin Sun’s Tron Foundation upon the acquisition of BitTorrent in 2018.
Cryptocurrency companies were also represented on the list, including Polychain Capital and Unchained Capital.
The PPP was created by the Trump administration during the COVID-19 outbreak to help companies pay their employees during the ongoing economic crisis. The effort was intended to stem the layoffs, although some 44 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits since March.
Loans to blockchain startups are likely to be controversial among cryptocurrency users given the industry’s roots in the Liberterian-inspired cypherpunk movement, which distrusted governments and banks. (Satoshi Nakamoto famously incorporated a bank bailout headline into the Bitcoin genesis block.) However, not taking an available subsidy could likely have put a company at a disadvantage over competitors who did, regardless of what the recipient believes about. merits of politics, as one industry insider pointed out.
It may also have been a strategy point. “Each fund has told their startups to do it [apply]”A Silicon Valley investor told CoinDesk in April.
The SBA has published data on over 660,000 recipients from various industries. Each entry included a range of how much money was received (specific amounts were not published) and the bank that issued each loan.
Loan recipients from the blockchain industry include:
This is an evolving story.
Correction (July 7, 22:30 UTC): An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified two of the loan recipients. The R3 LLC which received the SBA funding is different from the R3 LLC which develops the blockchain technology. SafeChain Solutions is also different from the blockchain company SafeChain. The Sovrin Foundation was removed after both it and the bank told CoinDesk that the transaction never took place, contrary to the SBA’s database
