Blockchain Lending Firm Dharma Raises $7 Million From Coinbase Ventures, Others
-based blockchain firm Dharma Labs has raised $7 million from big investors including , as the company confirmed to Cointelegraph on Feb. 5.
According to crypto news outlet , Dharma Labs is planning to use the raised capital mostly for its Lever product, a platform instant margin for traders and high-volume investors.
Max Bronstein, head of the Dharma Labs marketing team, reportedly claimed that Lever represents a alternative to . Genesis, a ₿itcoin () over-the-counter () trading firm that was the first -based to a , has recently it processed $1.114 billion in loans last year.
Bronstein stated that Lever would facilitate peer-to-peer crypto lending by allowing two parties of a loan to be discoverable, as well as eliminating the role of the middleman by putting trust on blockchain. He explained:
“Investors can take out loans against a number of different assets in sheer minutes, counter-party risk can be eliminated by smart contracts, borrowers can freely move their principal anywhere they’d like, and most importantly, all of this can be done at almost half of the cost offered by traditional lenders.”
According to the article, the Series A funding round was led by venture capital firm Green Visor Capital, while other investors included Polychain Capital, Passport Capital and Y Combinator.
The crypto lending industry to grow in 2018, with crypto lending firm BlockFi having recorded a tenfold increase in revenue over the second half of 2018.
In January, Business Insider that crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital is planning to raise at least $250 million to offer loans to crypto-related firms.
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A report by Cambridge University’s CCAF reveals that the number of people using cryptocurrency today has seen significant growth and rivals the population of small countries.
Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study
The has recently published a research paper called , which examines several sectors of the global cryptocurrency industry, including exchanges, wallets, payment providers, mining and more.
The study was led by Dr.Garrick Hileman, senior research associate at the CCAF and a researcher at the Centre for Macroeconomics. According to the CCAF, it’s the first global research of its kind to systematically investigate all key cryptocurrency industry sectors based on non-public “off-chain” data.
The paper makes several key findings that challenge some of the erroneous concepts that many have regarding the cryptocurrency space and shows that digital currencies are becoming an increasingly important part of our society. Dr.Garrick Hileman wrote:
“The growing usage and range of capabilities we document in this study indicate that cryptocurrencies are taking on an ever more important role in the lives of a growing number of people (and machines” around the world. As we show in this study, the number of people using cryptocurrency today has seen significant growth and rivals the population of small countries.”
According to Dr. Hileman, a second paper by the CCAF focusing will also be launched in the following weeks. The paper is centered around the use of blockchain technology by more established industry players as well as at public sector institutions such as .
What’s in it
The study collected data from nearly 150 cryptocurrency companies and individuals, covering 38 countries from five world regions, including names like from Blockchain.info, from bitcoin.com and companies like , , , Unocoin, and others.
The CCAF carried out four online surveys from September 2016 to January 2017 and communicated with the companies and individuals involved in order to collect this data. For companies that did not contribute to the study, the dataset was supplemented with additional research and web scraping using commonly applied methods.
The counts with four sections, each covering one of the aforementioned industry sectors: exchanges, wallets, payments and mining. There are also three appendixes; the first one is an introduction to cryptocurrencies, the second offers a more detailed intro to the cryptocurrency industry and the third covers the geographical dispersion of cryptocurrency users.
Key Findings
The CCAF highlights the following findings as the key points of the paper:
The current number of unique active users of cryptocurrency wallets is estimated to be between 2.9 million and 5.8 million. (The majority of which are located in North America and Europe)
The lines between the different cryptocurrency industry sectors are increasingly blurred: 31 percent of cryptocurrency companies surveyed are operating across two cryptocurrency industry sectors or more, giving rise to an increasing number of universal cryptocurrency companies.
At least 1,876 people are working full- time in the cryptocurrency industry and the actual total figure is likely well above two thousand when large mining organizations and other organizations that did not provide headcount figures are added.
Average security headcount and costs for payment companies and exchanges as a percentage of total headcount/operating expenses are similar but significantly higher for wallets.
Exchanges
The exchanges sector has the highest number of operating entities and employs more people than any other industry sector covered in the study; a significant geographical dispersion of exchanges is observed.
52% of the small exchanges hold a formal government license compared to only 35% of large exchanges.
On average, security headcount corresponds to 13% of total employees and 17% of the budget is spend on security.
Wallets
The lines between wallets and exchanges are increasingly blurred; 52% of wallets surveyed provide an integrated currency exchange features, of which 80% offer a national-to-cryptocurrency exchange service. In contrast with exchanges, the majority of wallets do not control access to user keys.
Payments
While 79% of payment companies have existing relationships with banking institutions and payment networks, the difficulty of obtaining and maintaining these relationships is cited as this sector’s biggest challenges.
On average, national-to-cryptocurrency payments constitute two-thirds of total payment company transaction volume, whereas national-to-national currency transfers and cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency payments account for 27% and 6% respectively.
Mining
70% of large miners rate their influence on protocol development as high or very high, compared to 51% of small miners.
The cryptocurrency mining map shows that publicly known mining facilities are dispersed, but a significant concentration can be observed in certain Chinese provinces.
Do you think cryptocurrency use is growing? Have you seen indicators of increased mainstream adoption? Let us know in the comments below!
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