Who is behind Kraken, Binance, Crypto.com or Coinbase: the greatest cryptocurrency exchanges

Son el lado empresarial más palpable del mundo de las criptomonedas. Los exchange -las plataformas que permiten comprar, vender o intercambiar estos activos digitales- son muchas veces conocidos por sus hackeos o sus filtraciones, pero han conseguido ser la vertiente de todo este fenómeno que más ha crecido también en la economía tradicional.

Today some of them quote on the stock market, others sponsor the NBA team stadiums and their leaders and founders begins to compare among the richest people in the world.The business of these exchange is simple: charge commissions for operating with cryptocurrencies.And there, being known and transmitting confidence is key.So much so that they have invested huge amounts of money in advertising to attract more and more users/customers, something that for many increasingly moves them away from traditional banks.But who are those founders?What is behind them?

Coinbase: The first company in the world crypt in going over

The Exchange - although much more than that - wants to take the position of a kind of cryptocurrency paypal.Coinbase was born in 2012 and, today, it is the largest exchange in the United States and after going a few months ago generating an initial record increase, it became the first company of the Crito and Bitcoin ecosystem to be quoted.In addition to offering its more than 43 million verified users the possibility of buying cryptocurrencies and storing them in their wallets, it has managed to generate some financial tools and services that in some way stop making it be considered a simple application or exchange center.

Today Coinbase offers accessories for online stores to receive payments with cryptodivisas, a debit card, and is planning to offer credit.In other words, it begins to stand in the closest to a Bitcoins bank, and its competitors are not so much other exchange and Paypal himself or Square.

Coinbase was founded in 2012 by Brain Armstrong (current CEO) and Fred Ehrsam.Before starting Coinbase, Armstrong worked as Airbnb software engineer.

Shortly after, they were accepted to present their idea in and Combinator, the most prestigious company acceleration program in the world.But, at that time, Reeves got out of the ship due to the background about the platform they wanted to create.

Instead, Armstrong matched Fred Ehrsam, former Goldman Sachs banker.A year later, the company already sold a million dollars in Bitcoins per month, and Coinbase began its most profitable business model and still lasts: the collection of commissions for purchase and sale operations.

In his brochure for the SEC Coinbase, he assures that last year his income fired, until 1.277.7 million dollars, with a net profit of 322.3 million.In short, it is a very profitable business.

Throughout its almost nine years of life, Coinbase has received more than 500 million dollars through investment rounds, among other investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Initialized Capital, Tiger Global or the Spanish Bank BBVA.

Binance: Changpeng Zhao's house, the world's largest cryptocurrency in the world

Binance is known for being an exchange with his own currency and that usually accommodates new projects or serve as a bridge to invest in them before others.

According to CoinmarketCap, the platform is currently the largest cryptocurrency exchange worldwide, in terms of volume of operations.Binance was developed in 2017 by its two co -founders: Changpeng Zhao and Yi He.Both were previous employees of Okcoin, another exchange, where they occupied executive positions.They left Okcoin to create Binance, a cryptodivis platform whose operations were based on China, although it is based in the Cayman Islands.The name "Binance" derives from a combination of binary and finance.

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To finance their new project, they organized the collection of funds through an initial offer of currencies (ICO) in which they offered 100 million Binance Coins (BNB) to investors.Through the event, the platform managed to raise more than 15 million dollars.35% of the funds collected were used to build the platform and perform system updates, 50% were allocated to marketing, while the remaining 15% were reserved to cope with leaving a free margin.

Binance's native token and its ease of use made the platform quickly popular among users.In the first six months, I had already reached three million users.At that time, Changpeng Zhao (nicknamed CZ), of Chinese origin but with Canadian nationality, pivot the strategy to become a brand known global, after the Chinese government prohibited the trade of cryptodivisas.

Although it has had important cases of robberies and hackeos, its popularity has not stopped growing, and with it the fortune of CZ, considered the greatest cryptocurrency of today.Its heritage is calculated in the equivalent of 96.900 million dollars, still possessing 90% of Binance shares.

Crypto.com: A blog that has ended up sponsoring the Staples Center or recording ads with Matt Damon

Crypto.com is one of the best known brands due to its agreement to sponsor the Staples Center, the Los Angeles Lakers stadium and make an important advertising campaign with Matt Damon as a face.

However, less than four years ago, Crypto.com was the personal blog of a computer professor at the University of Pennsylvania.Its origin is a start-up called Monaco created in 2016, a company offered brand visa debit cards that could be recharged with cryptocurrencies.

Like many others, he achieved financing coining his own digital token and selling it to the public in 2017.The company's balance was almost 200 million in mid -2018, as Kris Marszalek, its executive director, to TechCrunch then explained.

But the great fall of the end of 2017 arrived.It was then, during a collapse of cryptocurrency prices, when Marszalek decided to rename Monaco.He contacted Matt Blaze, a cryptography professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who had been the owner of the Crypto domain name.com for 25 years.During that time, Blaze had refused to part with the web direction and had publicly despised the new cryptocurrency fever.Until the money (a lot of money) knocked on his door.

In a blog post by July 2018, he wrote that he had “received a growing flood of offers, many of which were obviously not serious, but some of which were, frankly, striking, for the Crypto domain.com."He said that" he had shrugged before most of them, but it was getting clearer than maintaining domain made less and less sense to me ".It is not known what was paid for domain.

Marszalek, 42, a businessman of Polish origin, directs Crypto.com and his parent company, Foris Technology, which currently is based in Singapore.

Crypto.com is only the ninth cryptocurrency exchange by daily volume, according to Coinmarketcap, but its marketing play with the Staple or its announcement with Damon has put them in the forefront.

Kraken: The Exchange that grew after the biggest cryptocurrency scandal

Kraken, based in San Francisco, is another cryptocurrency exchange, and one of the most solera has.Created in 2011, it is owned by Payward Inc.and is directed by his CEO and co -founder Jesse Powell.

His popularity began to emerge Cunado in 2014 Bloomberg chose his indexes together with Coinbase to provide information.

But then another great milestone arrived.In 2014, the MT scandal.Gox was news: an exchange that left its users shivering after losing in various attacks 850.000 bitcoins.It remains the greatest case of this type seen so far.Kraken was selected to support users who were left without coverage, who had to open an account on the platform.

Until that time, Kraken was not among the greatest exchanges, and attended mainly European clients through an association with Fidor Bank, based in Germany.

Today Kraken continues to maintain that good image both at the security level and for regulators.