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The post Liberland to Issue Its Own Cryptocurrency, Accepts Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash And Ethereum appeared first on CCN

Liberland, a self-proclaimed country between Serbia and Croatia that has been struggling for its independence for three years, plans to launch its own cryptocurrency in a few months, and is accepting donations in bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum. Half a million people have applied for Liberland citizenship. Liberland’s territory, however, remains in dispute, as Croatia

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Chicago, IL – CCN correspondent Eric Eissler had a chance to sit down with Chief Operating Officer Benjamin Weiss of CoinFlip at its Chicago headquarters to learn about the company, the ATMs, and the general outlook on cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency ATMs: A Brief History In the United States, there are 1,545 cryptocurrency ATMs according to CoinATMRadar. The first

The post An Interview with a Crypto-ATM Manufacturer: Bringing Bitcoin ATMs to Every Corner appeared first on CCN

 The Samsung Galaxy S8 is a beautiful phone with a critical flaw. The fingerprint sensor is in the wrong damn spot. A phone is only as good as its usability and, to me, the S8 is crippled with its fingerprint sensor located off center. It drives me mad but Samsung finally righted the wrong with the S9. Samsung just announced the latest Galaxy phone and we spent some time with it. It’s… Read More

• New airport projects in the US face numerous roadblocks along the way.
• According to veteran airport architect Keith Thompson, new airports face four major challenges.
• They range from government regulation to the way these projects are funded.

In spite of our many complaints about the state of air travel in the US, Americans are flying more than ever. As a result, our airports are bursting at the seams with business travelers and holiday goers.

The nation's runways are overwhelmed by the number of planes that need to take off and land every day. Even with an intricately choreographed approach and departure sequences, congestion is almost inevitable.

Three of the six busiest airports in the world can be found in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

While the last major international airport built in the US, Denver International, opened its doors more than two decades ago.

During which time new airports, shining palaces of aviation, are popping up all around the world. China, alone, has roughly four dozen airports in development.

The reality is that America needs new airports with more runways and bigger terminals. Yes, there are projects underway around the country that are trying to address the problem. The new $4 billion Delta Air Lines terminal at LaGuardia Airport is a great example of this. 

Still, infrastructure upgrades just aren't happening at a pace commensurate with the growth in traffic.

So what's stopping us?

To find out, we asked someone who would know first hand. Keith Thompson is firmwide aviation and transportation practice area leader at Gensler, one of the world's leading airport architects. The firm's work includes JetBlue's Terminal at JFK International and the recent renovation of Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport.

Over his thirty year career, he's worked on more than 60 airports around the world.

And according to Thompson, there are four major challenges associated with the development of a new airport in the US. They range political to pure economics.

The American democracy slows down new airport

The first of those challenges is also one of the core tenets upon which our nation is built: democracy.

The democratic process allows for discussion and input from all parties affected by large-scale infrastructure projects like airports.

In the US, unlike some places around the world, "you can't just tell a village that we're going to move you and start the bulldozers," Thompson said in a recent interview with Business Insider.

"Developing a public facility in the United States with our legal system and environmental regulations makes it a much more difficult road to hoe."

Regulations pose a challenge

This leads us to the second of the challenges. The regulatory environment. Government regulations designed to protect Americans from the harm caused by the arrival of a few hundred commercial airliners can also slow down the pace at which our nation can build new airports.

Issues such as the environmental impact of increased noise pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and the degradation local air quality must be assessed before a project can move forward.

America is not alone, this is something confronted by airport developers around most of the developed world.

The way US airports are funded affects where they are located

The third challenge has to do with cost and the way airports are financed in the US.

Traditionally airports around the world been funded through ties to local or national governments. "In the US, because airports have, at least traditionally, been funded by revenue bonds backed by the airlines, airlines have some say in whether new airports proceed or not," Thompson said.

Ideally, you want to build an airport in areas where you don't have objecting neighbors and environmental limitations, but with lots of cheap land. This means quicker development and lower cost.

Unfortunately, most of the locations that fit the description are in sparsely populated areas. And that's not where airlines want to be.

"The airlines, by and large, want to operate where there's a strong originations and destinations base," the veteran architect said.

This means a new airport must be located near a major metropolitan area so that there is enough business coming from people starting or ending their trip at the facility in addition to connecting traffic.

Older airports have to shut down so new airports can survive

Even if the airport is located near a metropolitan area, the airport would still, by necessity, be located further away from the city.

But if there's an existing facility closer to the city, it needs to be shut down in order for the new airport to be economically feasible.

"In order to make it economically viable for people to move to a newer, less convenient, and probably higher cost airport, you can't have a lower cost alternative in their backyard," Thompson told us.

For example, when the Denver International Airport opened, authorities shuttered Stapleton International which was located just a few miles away from downtown Denver. In July 1998, Hong Kong all air service shifted from the old Kai Tak Airport to the new Hong Kong International Airport built on land reclaimed from the South China Sea.

SEE ALSO: Emirates boss warns that American, Delta, and United are trying to open Pandora's box and the US economy will be the loser

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

• "Investors are unlikely to see a return to conventional capitalism," Macquarie global analyst Victor Shvets said in a note to clients.
• Countries started to borrow heavily in the 1980s to counter declining growth and productivity rates, halting traditional business cycles. 
• As a result, there has been "no clearance of past excesses," leading to an unequal society, confusion among investors and the potential for a destabilizing war.

Capitalism, as it is described in textbooks, is dead, according to Victor Shvets, global strategist at Australian investment bank Macquarie.

The traditional business cycle that characterised post-World War II capitalism until the 1980s has been replaced by ever-increasing debt levels and an abundance of capital and labour. 

"The key driver is what we refer to as ‘declining returns on humans and conventional capital’. Value and role of labour inputs (measured in hours worked) and conventional capital (finance, infrastructure, machinery) is declining," Shvets said this month in a note to clients.

Shvets said countries have reached the limit of borrowing to maintain their wealth levels.

"Only the least financialized societies (representing ~10% of global demand) still have considerable room for further leveraging," he said. "The rest have perhaps already crossed the Rubicon at which finance becomes ‘poison’ rather than a positive boost. Global leverage doubled from ~1.5x GDP in early 1990s to ~3x GDP and leverage continues to climb as societies refuse to adjust capacity and instead insist on trying to grow demand to match excess capacity."

On top of this, hidden leverage in the financial sector has rocketed:

Meanwhile companies have to change their business models at least every decade to keep up with a world in which the prices are stagnant or falling and new challengers can pop up to take advantage of cheap financing.

It's a challenging environment for investors. In the past, most could rest easy by investing in dominant blue-chip companies or maxi mise returns by exploiting predictable cycles. 

Shvets said: "In a world of private sector dominance, clear (and relatively predictable) private sector signals and information gaps, there are significant trading opportunities. This is not the world we inhabit."

Shvets lists three ways this new era could end.

There is one good "ticket out of prison" and two bad options, according to Shvets:

• 1. Central banks win: The best outcome is a "sustained recovery in private sector productivity" which allows central banks to gradually withdraw financial stimulus and return to normal rates without an asset-price shock. Shvets said the probability of this happening is "low for years to come."
• 2. Governments take over: If the private sector cannot mop up the supply of capital and labour, then the public sector will have to step in, Shvets said. Policy choices include a universal income, a merger of central banks and treasuries, massive Marshall Plan investments in under-developed countries and boosting education. "Such significant shifts are unlikely until a ‘jolt’ to the system," Shvets said.
• 3. War: Or, as Shvets describes it, "the destruction of surplus capital and/or labour." This is the more likely but "least pleasant" potential outcome.

SEE ALSO: One of the top strategists in the world explains the wave of populism that's sweeping the globe and the role technology has played | Markets Insider

DON'T MISS: BUFFETT: There's one 'terrible mistake' long-term investors are making

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

• Business Insider checked in with Dan Romero, VP and general manager at Coinbase, to find out what its like trying to grow and scale one of the hottest startups in tech.
• Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange, saw $1 billion in profits last year as bitcoin surged in popularity and nearly hit $20,000 in value.
• Now Romero is tasked with building an organization and product that is suited to handle wild consumer demand. That includes implementing technologies like SegWit, a sometimes-controversial technology that aims to improve bitcoin.
• Romero downplayed rumors that Coinbase is seeking a CFO ahead of a prospective IPO, saying instead that he's focused on building a company that could do for cryptocurrency what Google did for search.

Coinbase is one of the hottest startups in tech — and with good reason. The cryptocurrency exchange hit $1 billion in annual revenue as this year's bitcoin mania sent the popular digital coin surging up to almost $20,000, before it came back down. 

With a reported 10 million customers served on the platform, Coinbase is far and away the most popular exchange in the US. And investors have noticed, giving the six-year-old startup $100 million in capital at a $1.6 billion valuation in a funding round last August.

But popularity comes at a price, and Coinbase has stumbled through the difficult of scaling from a niche product to a real, sustainable business. It was under these circumstances that Dan Romero, a four-year veteran of Coinbase, took on the role of general manager and vice president of the company in January. 

Romero, who previously ran the startup's business development, is now in charge of growing and scaling both the engineering and product side of Coinbase, as well as its internal operations. Or, in Romero's own words — "the overall customer experience, that's what I wake up every day and focus on," he tells Business Insider.

In conversation with Business Insider, Romero downplayed a recent Recode report that the company was hiring a CFO to go public — but didn't deny it, either. In a bigger-picture sense, Romero says that Coinbase is trying to build a company that could do for cryptocurrency what Google did for search. 

Below, find our conversation with Romero, touching on everything from upstart cryptocurrency exchange rivals like Robinhood, to the sometimes-controversial SegWit technology that could improve bitcoin, to the future of Coinbase itself. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

With competition growing, Romero says Coinbase is focusing on the mission

Becky Peterson: The competition seems to be growing, with a lot of companies launching cryptocurrency exchanges. How do you define yourself and see the positioning of Coinbase in the long-term compared to other companies in the space?

Dan Romero: We are a first mover in the space in terms of building a consumer friendly brand. We are enabling individuals to be able to get into the ecosystem and be able to experiment with digital currency.

We've had a lot of challenges around with scaling. We've had a lot of customers come on to the platform in the last year and we're doing everything in our power to make sure we're giving them a great customer experience. It's not where it needs to be today. I think hopefully soon we'll have made significant improvements there.

But I think if we shift to long-term, Coinbase is going to be 100% focused on cryptocurrency. Our mission is to build an open financial system for the world. We're not interested in equities or options trading or any of the other kind of traditional financial system products.

We're a neutral platform that is focused on bringing digital currencies to the world more broadly, and not picking favorites or following a political path.  

We're focused on digital currency. Where we will be successful is if customers fundamentally think of us as "the crypto company." That is our focus. So with other folks coming into the market, it's validation that cryptocurrency is more mainstream. But we fundamentally don't view cryptocurrency as a feature. It's our business.

If you look at a couple of the more recent entrants into the market, they don't allow you to send and receive digital currency, or they make you jump through significant hoops to do that. And I think that is antithetical to the idea of cryptocurrency to begin with.

It's fundamentally something to be used, and you can move it around just like you can more your own files around. So the fact that a service would come in and let you speculate on price but not actually use currencies — in some ways that's actually concerning to me.

Peterson: What do you mean? The fact that Coinbase offers payment features and things like that?

Romero: Yeah, but I think a great example, there is a competitor that's rolling out today, where if you go to their help section, they don't allow you to send digital currencies to them, and in order to access withdrawals you have to go through multiple hoops and it may take you a week to do that.

Peterson: Are you talking about Robinhood?

Romero: Yeah, I think they're launching today.

Coinbase may be hiring a new CFO to take the company public 

Peterson: Back to the business side of things — this week Recode reported that Coinbase is looking for a new chief financial officer to help take the company public. Is that true? 

Romero: We are hiring a bunch of different executives at the company. It's part of the scaling effort. We have a CFO right now. We may or may not be looking for a CFO. But I think the broader story here is that we're trying to scale the company because we're looking to build a lasting company in the space.

We may or may not be looking for a CFO. But I think the broader story here is that we're trying to scale the company because we're looking to build a lasting company in the space.

Peterson: In the case that Coinbase does go public, how do you convince investors that this company has a future?

Romero: I think our view is that this is similar to the beginning of the internet. So we're trying to build a Google-like company for the cryptocurrency space. Things like SegWit are a good example, where we need to ensure that we have the latest and greatest in terms of cryptocurrency. That's how we're going to be the cryptocurrency company, that if we do go public at some point in the future, we'll have that narrative.

So we will be focused on that as a business, rather than a feature. We think a lot of the developer interest we've seen grow in 2017 is validation of the fact that this is something that will have staying power, rather than a flash in the pan.

Peterson: When it comes to new technology like SegWit — how do you perceive the role of Bitcoin Core and the open source foundations behind the cryptocurrencies on your platform? Do you think those foundations will lead innovation on crypto or do you see Coinbase doing R&D?

Romero: We are actually trying to increase the amount of contributions we're making at the core protocol level. We have a significant amount of talent that we're trying to hire for, for engineers that would only be working on protocols. So no direct benefit to Coinbase, they would be doing open source development on protocols like bitcoin and ethereum.

We have an engineer right now who's working on the Lightning Network. We view this as both beneficial to Coinbase in the long-term because it makes digital currencies more scalable and more accessible for more people. But at the same time, it's us giving back. Because we're obviously a business that benefits from the open source protocols that exist.

I think you'll see us continue to hire more people whose sole responsibility will be to work with core developers in multiple digital currency protocols and try to help accomplish roadmaps that those communities have set out.

The company will double headcount to around 500 people this year

Peterson: Do you have a headcount or hiring numbers for 2018?

Romero: We're effectively doubling the numbers in terms of headcount, from roughly 250 to 500. We wish we could hire faster but it's very hard to hire in San Francisco, New York and London.

Peterson: Do you have to do a lot of training or are you mostly hiring people who have experience in crypto?

Romero: It's pretty hard to find people with experience in crypto specifically. We've found that a lot of engineers at more traditional software companies are getting pretty interested in cryptocurrency and that those folks are coming into Coinbase and learning on the job.

If you're a senior software engineer and you've worked with distributed system or just hard computer science type problems, this is stuff that you can pick up pretty quickly once its your full-time job.

Peterson: Is it the same when it comes to hiring executives? You just hired Tina Bhatnagar, who was previously at Twitter. 

Romero: Cryptocurrency hasn't been around for a long enough period of time, so to hire an executive who can scale a support operation, who also has cryptocurrency experience — I'm not sure that they exist.

Tina's a great example. She was dealing with an order of magnitude larger scale support organization, and having her skill set come in — maybe she's earlier on the digital currency learning curve, but that's a sweet spot for us. She's quickly picking it up on the job, and is clearly a talent person.

But the nice thing is that she's seen the movie before, in terms of scaling a support organization, so she's able to hit the ground running.

In the last month and a half she's done more in some ways than we were able to do before. So it's really great to bring in experienced folks on a variety of different functions.

Peterson: Are there any more updates on the roadmap, in terms of major technical changes like SegWit?

Romero: Nothing specific. At a high level, we're focused on providing customers what they want and what customers continually tell us is that they want high reliability during peak times,. So we're continuing to focus on the scaling of the core infrastructure. I think the other big area for customers is wanting to add new assets.

We're going to be slow to do that. We're going to carefully evaluate any new assets we add to the platform, first and foremost from a security angle to make sure we're not adding assets that potentially have a security vulnerability.

We are never going to be the brand that adds every asset under the sun first. For us it's about being the most trusted.

CoinBase is betting on SegWit, a technology to improve bitcoin

Peterson: Coinbase announced this week that it's rolling out support for SegWit, a software upgrade for bitcoin. How did the update process go? I understand you were testing it for a while. 

Romero: If you look at social media over the last couple of months you have a lot of feedback saying, "Why hasn't Coinbase implemented SegWit? It took this team two days to update this product. Why can't Coinbase, with all the money and engineers they have, do it in just as quick of a time?"

It's a little underestimating the scale that we're operating at.

We're holding billions of dollars in customer digital currency. Any change we make to that core business structure has to be thoroughly tested both from the implementation, to make sure it's working, standpoint, but also some serious security considerations.

We're a very much a measure twice, cut once culture — and in some cases maybe it's measure three times and cut once.

We're a very much a measure twice, cut once culture — and in some cases maybe it's measure three times and cut once.

But the upgrade for SegWit was challenging for a couple of reasons. A primary reason is that we have our own proprietary implementation of bitcoin, in terms of the node software we run.

Because we operate at a pretty large scale, we need something that can run for all of the transactions and customers that we're dealing with, but separately that also provides additional security benefits to us.

So when we have an upgrade like this, we have to actually take it and re-implement it ourselves in some capacity. So I think that is going to inevitably makes it a little slower to make changes. But when we do, you'll know that we've been really thoughtful about doing that.

So I think at a hig- level, it's something we've been tracking. And it took us a while to get done but we're quite pleased that it's finally ready to go and it's going to be rolling out to customers in the next few days.

Peterson: Besides the impact this will have on the greater bitcoin network, how will SegWit affect Coinbase customers?

Romero: The fees aren't determined by Coinbase as much as the network. It's a marketplace. You can only have so many transactions in a given block and if there are a lot of transactions on the network at any given moment, then the fees will naturally increase.

So what SegWit does is it allows more transactions to be in the network at any given time. And given how big Coinbase is relative to the network, it means that we aren't consuming any more of the network for customer transactions than we need to be. So we're technically making our infrastructure as efficient as we can.

You'll see on Reddit and Twitter, people will say, "Okay, SegWit, great. What about transaction batching?" That's something I think we're going to be considering as well. It's all about prioritization, and for us bitcoin is an area that we're continuing to invest in.

Peterson: What's transaction batching?

Romero: It's just another technique to efficiently process transactions. It's not an upgrade so much as a best practice when you're at scale.

SegWit is a first step in terms of improving the efficiency of our bitcoin infrastructure, and we view it as a benefit for our customers as well as the bitcoin network and community at large that we're updated with the latest and greatest.

Romero says SegWit is about customers, not bitcoin politics 

Peterson: Critics of Coinbase have suggested that the company was against SegWit at some point because you were in support of a different upgrade to bitcoin altogether.

Romero: That is unequivocally false. We always try to do right by our customers. 

What it is, is that ultimately we hold a lot of bitcoin on behalf of customers. Those customers, in the case of a fork, want access to those coins, especially if the fork is going to have more of a legitimate developer community behind it.  

We need to make sure that we're keeping that bitcoin safe, and in the event that there are situations like forks where customers potentially have two different assets, we should let customers choose what to do with those assets.

There is a group of people in the world who think that Coinbase should have one very clear political stance, and I think that's just not where we are at this point.

We're a neutral platform that is focused on bringing digital currencies to the world more broadly, and not picking favorites or following a political path.  

SEE ALSO: Visa takes the blame for a glitch that hit Coinbase cryptocurrency investors with thousands of dollars in 'ghost' charges

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NOW WATCH: Goldman Sachs is telling its multimillionaire clients not to worry about valuations or inflation

The post Cryptocurrency Market Struggles at $500 Billion, But Fundamentals are Strong appeared first on CCN

Major cryptocurrencies have struggled to sustain their upward momentum secured earlier this week, on February 23. Bitcoin has fallen below the $10,000 mark again, while Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency Ether has struggled to spike above $900. Bitcoin Earlier this year, the dominance index of bitcoin reached an all-time low at around 32 percent. Throughout the recovery

The post Cryptocurrency Market Struggles at $500 Billion, But Fundamentals are Strong appeared first on CCN

• Paul Singer's Elliott Management, a $34 billion hedge fund, is beating the drum again about an impending market crash.
• Elliott has long raised concerns about market conditions.
• "If you think the human race is in a better and more knowledgeable state than in the past, good luck to you," Elliott wrote in its most recent client letter, which was seen by Business Insider.
• "Our centered case is still that the prices of global debt instruments are significantly distorted (on the upside) by money-printing and artificially low interest rates, and that there will be some kind of significant downward price adjustment soon," the letter said.

Elliott Management, a $34 billion hedge fund founded by billionaire Paul Singer, is once again beating the drum about an impending market crash.

In a January letter to clients seen by Business Insider, Elliott dedicated a little more than two pages to its thesis, starting the section by saying: "We like the word 'dénouement' better than 'outcome,' and it sounds way more sophisticated and nuanced than 'the end is near' or “the chickens are coming home to roost."

The letter then sets out why Elliott believes the "long, steady, upward movement in asset prices" is a cause for alarm, saying the movement has been driven by unprecedented levels of new debt, accelerating growth of passive investing, emergency-level interest rates, and the confidence expressed in volatility-selling strategies.

"These drivers of asset-price levitation seem to us to presage the possibility of a sudden, possibly intense, downward readjustment (you may substitute “crash” for that phrase if you desire)," the letter said. 

Elliott's letters are known for their bearish views, and this latest letter notes that advancing the possibility of a severe bear market or crash puts the firm "in the wild-eyed and 'a bit off' category." 

"But we can say with assurance that unless the human race and the principles of finance and economics have entered an entirely new realm, with history being irrelevant, it seems like an extraordinarily treacherous period for the global economy and financial system."

The challenge for Elliott, according to the letter, is maintaining these contrarian views without "letting those views blow up careers, capital and credibility." After all, Elliott has been warning of a potential crash for several years now, in which time it's been expected to deliver a return in an environment where markets have continued to rise. 

"We have faced this challenge for decades, but we cannot remember a sterner test than the challenge which is posed currently by the minefield of puzzling, silly and implausible structures and elements, combined with wildly inappropriate and widespread complacency," the letter said. 

The hedge fund also wrote a brutal takedown of cryptocurrencies, saying they will likely one day be described "as one of the most brilliant scams in history," in its letter.

SEE ALSO: Elliott Management, a $34 billion hedge fund, described cryptocurrencies as ‘one of the most brilliant scams in history’ in a brutal takedown

DON'T MISS: A new lawsuit casts doubt on what billionaire Steve Cohen's deputies have been saying for years

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NOW WATCH: Ken Rogoff on the next financial crisis and the future of bitcoin

• The crypto boom is leading to a surge in business for compliance companies that help businesses verify customer identities and make sure their funds are legitimate.
• Onfido, which automates ID checks, saw a 10x increase in crypto-related business in the fourth quarter of last year.

LONDON — The recent boom in cryptocurrencies isn't just creating wealth for companies issuing their own digital tokens or investors speculating on them — compliance guys are doing well too.

"The start of Q4 to end Q4 [there was] a 10x increase in checks for crypto clients," Eamon Jubbawy, the cofounder and COO of document verification business Onfido, told Business Insider.

The global cryptocurrency market surged towards the end of 2017, doubling in size in a matter of months as startups rushed to raise money issuing their own cryptocurrencies and new investors piled into the market in the hopes of making big returns.

The surge in interest meant many cryptocurrency exchanges, where coins are traded, were overwhelmed with demand. Many of the biggest closed their doors to new customers as they grappled with a backlog in customer verification.

While crypto remains a largely unregulated space, regulators around the world have signalled they are watching it closely. Crypto companies have been proactively following the kind of ID checks and money source verification that are commonplace in the world of regular finance in a bid to head off any future regulatory troubles.

"Quite often they’re doing it in the house themselves before they come to us," Jubbawy said. "They’re doing it manually and then they realise they need someone to be able to automate it and do it at scale."

Onfido runs automated checks of ID documents to make sure they are real, helping companies comply with so-called "know your customer" regulation. Its main crypto customers are exchanges and ICOs, Jubbawy said. Bitstamp, Europe's oldest bitcoin exchange, recently announced that it is working with Onfido after it was overwhelmed with the level of new sign-ups over the Christmas period.

Jubbawy said that Onfido is now doing "millions" of document checks for crypto clients and has verified investor documents from 214 countries.

"Asia is massive, obviously Europe and the US as you’d expect but also places like India as well are big," he said. "It’s a global phenomenon. I’m just looking at the map now and there are all these Pacific Islands where people are buying crypto — it’s quite funny."

Charles Delingpole, the CEO and founder of anti-money laundering checking service ComplyAdvantage, told BI that his business is also seeing a big uptick in crypto business.

"We had a guy who went to the Miami crypto conference and we have a landing page for ICOs but without much trying we’ve had a lot of inbound leads and referrals," Delingpole said. "We’ve had a definite uptick in companies using us for crypto-related activities."

The motivations for crypto companies to work with companies like ComplyAdvantage and Onfido is the same as for any other finance business.

"No company wants to deal with North Korean drug traffickers, right?" Delingpole said. "No company wants to have a supplier who’s linked to corrupt Venezuelan politicians exporting cash."

Echoing the old adage "in a gold rush, sell shovels", Delingpole said: "Levis obviously made jeans for the gold miners right? We would argue that we’re critical components of companies being able to do this without inadvertently laundering money."

Jubbawy said: "The guys who are coming to us are saying hey, we want to make sure the people who are investing are legitimate people rather than people who are looking to move around dirty money, can you verify they’re not on any terrorist watch lists or anything like that?

"We love the fact we can inject a bit of trust and security into an industry that is otherwise set up for potential criminal activity."

For ComplyAdvantage, crypto represents a "small but growing" part of its overall business, Delingpole said. "For us, it’s an additional thing that gives us more scale but it’s a very small portion of our overall business."

Jubbawy said: "It’s not insignificant. A 10X uptick in any industry you’re serving is going to show. It’s definitely helped our growth recently but we work with such a wide variety of people."

This growing revenues have not gone unnoticed. Pawel Kuskowski, a former senior RBS compliance banker, set up Coinfirm in 2016. The company specialises in providing "know your customer" and anti-money laundering services to crypto companies.

Kuskowski told BI: "Demand is huge, and it is increasing. And this demand isn’t just being pushed by smaller crypto and blockchain startups, but by huge, blue-chip multinationals who want to transact in crypto. This demand will become too big to ignore.

"We work with a large number of companies ranging from ICOs, crypto exchanges, and banks. These companies want to know that the business and individuals that are transacting using cryptocurrencies are ‘honest actors’ — in other words, they are not exposed to illicit activities or involved in any other shady practices.

"By ensuring that the necessary compliance procedures are in place, these companies are able to confidently work with a larger client base. It makes sense to all parties involved."

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NOW WATCH: Forget 'Make America Great Again' — Wharton professor says Trump has been terrible for America's brand

The surging price of bitcoin (among others) in 2017 led more than a few companies to hop on the cryptocurrency bandwagon with hopes of striking it rich almost overnight. Many of their initial coin offerings seemed dodgy from the outset... and it tur...