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On Twitter, the free scams of "Ethereum" are unleashed. Similar phishing scams abound on Slack. And on Telegram, important notifications are stifled in a deluge of frivolous chatter.
How can a cryptocurrency investor be informed when all the main communication channels are full of noise and misinformation?
Insert the block. Founded in 2014 by early supporters of Dash, a virtual currency based on the optimized bitcoin code, the portfolio monitoring app has attracted up to over 4.5 million users. "Crypto" enthusiasts use the service, which offers information on over 6,000 cryptocurrencies and integrations with over 240 online exchanges, to keep tabs on their positions up to date, to check price and market information and to receive updates from developers of cryptocurrency projects.
On Wednesday, Blockfolio said it had raised $ 11.5 million in a fundraising round led by Pantera Capital, one of the first and most prolific hedge funds focused on cryptocurrency. Other well-rounded investors were the Bitmex and Huobi cryptocurrency exchanges, as well as the venture capital companies Danhua Capital, DCM Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Mayfield and Pathfinder.
"If we were just a price monitoring application, we would not be able to collect that kind of money," says Ed Moncada, co-founder and CEO of Blockfolio. Moncada presents a new feature called "signal", released in May, which allows cryptocurrency teams to transmit updates through a one-way channel via optional push notifications, a different configuration from infinite scroll feeds filled with all those who predominate today .
Moncada sees an opportunity for Blockfolio to expand beyond a market data provider as a mediator for project participants. In the end, he would like cryptocurrency teams to use the app to solicit feedback from coin holders, allowing investors to propose changes to features and vote on protocol updates.
Today, Blockfolio has 90 cryptocurrency teams that use the app to release one-way updates and another 300 and more teams are on the waiting list. Companies that use Blockfolio to send notifications include the Augur prediction market, the initiation of the Civic blockchain identity, the Zcash secret currency and the decentralized exchange project 0x.
Moncada says that Blockfolio controls the teams to make sure that "they will not invade people with false advertising on marketing".
Blockfolio can be downloaded for free on iOS and Android. Moncada says the app has not been monetized to date, although it has released three announcements since its debut in 2015. In recent months, the company has turned down hundreds of requests to post ads for projects hosting the so-called initial offers of coins, or ICO, he says.
Moncada claims to prefer that ads promote the shadowing of Blockfolio ICOs in order to preserve the trust of its users, even if this means giving up revenues in the amount of over 2 million dollars a month. amount that estimates that all these ads could have generated.
"With that craze going on," says Moncada, referring to a boom in cryptocurrency investments that brought investors into hysteria last winter, "we felt it was something we did not want to touch or be part of" . Describes most of the ad searchers as "cash withdrawals".
Blockfolio's biggest rival is Delta, an 'other app that offers monitoring of the cryptocurrency portfolio and provides market data. On Tuesday, Delta released a feature similar to Blockfolio that allows investors to receive notifications from developers.
In addition to the fundraising announcement, Blockfolio presented a new version of its app on Wednesday, as shown in the screenshot above.
