Coinpanion transforms the crypto projects to make a revolution in the cryptocurrency market

Cryptocurrency is flourishing in the global financial market owing to the smart functionalities of blockchain technology. Multiple companies have identified the potential market with the use of thousands of cryptocurrencies to make it more transparent and reliable. Companies like Coinpanion and others are transforming the financial sector by making smart portfolios. 

Here is an exclusive interview with Alexander Valtingojer, CEO and Co-Founder, Coinpanion, who elaborates the idea of the company to ensure unique crypto projects are present in the highly volatile cryptocurrency market without sufficient knowledge of how cryptocurrencies work and process. 

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization and the services that your company offers. 

Coinpanion is a Vienna-based dynamic fintech that was founded in 2019 to provide smart portfolios for all types of investors with the specialization in making the crypto world more accessible and transparent. Innovative technologies are reshaping the world all the way from decentralized banking systems to digital art. With Coinpanion, one can join this revolution by investing in the world of tomorrow. There are already thousands of cryptocurrencies and more are added every month. The choice is enormous and making the right decision can be overwhelming. At Coinpanion, a team of industry experts carefully selects coins to be a part of a portfolio. So one doesn't have to make own decision and can rely on experts who ensure that only unique crypto projects that will stand the test of time are selected!

2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company? 

Every idea starts with a problem and in this case two young South-Tyrolians at a house party. In 2018, Alexander Valtingojer (CEO) met Matthias Zandanel (CTO) and they were talking about how complicated it was to invest in cryptocurrencies compared to investing in the stock market. Little did they know what their chat would lead to. 

Driven by the vision to make the crypto market accessible for everyone, at first, the two came up with a concept of a platform where successful cryptocurrency traders could be copied. Soon, Aaron Penn (Lead Developer), Matthias' old partner-in-crime, joined the team. Just as the platform was picking up momentum in 2019, the three realized that they no longer believed in the concept. Everything was dependent on the traders, who acted intransparent and users were blindly following the traders with the highest recent profits.

By the end of 2019, they decided to close the copy trading platform and look for a better way to make the crypto market accessible for everyone. Armed with all the know-how accumulated over the past years, the team launched the first version of Coinpanion and also managed to close its first investment round in August 2020. The beta was causing quite a buzz in the Austrian start-up scene and Coinpanion started gaining traction. 

In spring 2021, the team realized that the problem of accessibility was not only a problem in the world of cryptocurrencies but also for many other forms of investments. At this point, the team's vision became much broader, aiming to make investing in the world of alternative investments as easy as they had already done with cryptocurrencies. By August 2021, the team had grown to seven and received €1.8 million seed investment from investors like Florian Gschwandtner (Founder of Runtastic), Patrick Pöschl (Founder of Scalable Capital) and one of Europe's most active venture funds, High-Tech Gründerfonds.

Just in 2021, Coinpanion has grown from just the founding team of four to over 30 people, with over 15 different nationalities.

3. Brief us about the proactive Founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions towards the company and the industry.

I started with crypto in 2014/2015 when I was in high school. Back then, I was buying and selling games on Steam by Valve Corporation on different forums— a common medium of payment was Bitcoin and PayPal. For me, Bitcoin was just "cool internet money" that I used to buy other games or (by converting it to fiat) other real-life goods (like a motorcycle). Little did I know how it would influence my future life. I have been involved in the crypto scene since 2015 and was invited as an expert on cryptocurrencies on TV, radio and numerous newspapers. Before starting Coinpanion, I worked on several blockchain projects. Now I spend most of my day reading about crypto, DeFi, NFTs, or the future of the internet— #Web3.

4. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

The biggest USP is the offering of diversified portfolios (principal) of ETFs on the traditional market), everyone can already start with 50€. One does not need any knowledge about trading or crypto markets since Coinpanion is doing that for them.

5. Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognitions and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company. 

The company raised more than 1.8 million Euro in funding from a fantastic bunch of investors while building up the team from four to over 30 people. Gradually, the team is growing double-digit MOM across all KPIs while shifting from a garage-like office to a beautiful new place close to the city center of Vienna. The management iterated Coinpanion from a scrappy website with one single portfolio to a full-fledged platform with multiple portfolio offerings, card payments, savings plans, mobile apps, automated tax reports (blockpit), etc., especially CO2 neural portfolios.

6. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead? What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

The company has a plan to launch Coinpanion in multiple countries with more category-specific investment products such as gaming, DAO, DeFi, etc.), like DeFi happened in the middle of January. There will be an expansion of the offering to DeFi and NFT based products (doing to Digital Assets what ETFs did to stocks) while raising a  monster Series A to become the fidelity of digital assets. Two-single (ETH, Bitcoin) and more new DeFi portfolios will be released by doing a 12h hackathon.

There has never been a better time to be in crypto. It is currently experiencing the birth of the new internet— an internet where people produce, own, and exchange value in a digital way. Right now the world is experiencing how NFTs are trending. It is a very interesting move since it proves that the habits of the new generation and how they deal with ownership is changing. Imagine an audience of over two billion people who can see which NFT one owns, creates, and interacts with. It's just a matter of time until one will see NFTs on all major platforms. 

It is interesting to see how decupled NFTs and typical cryptocurrencies are. In the last few weeks, crypto investors saw major drops over the whole cryptocurrency market, while there was a significant price increase over the general NFT market. It seems like within the whole crypto domain, industries are becoming big enough to be fully independent. For example, Nike bought RTFKT studios and is doubling down on NFTs and the Metaverse. Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for nearly US$70 billion, becoming one of the largest gaming companies in the world and bolstering its claim to leadership in the metaverse.

The current crypto market feels a lot like summer 2021. NFTs on social media could be a significant mainstream push. The opinion is to not overthink short-term market movements. Markets are crazy, especially in times like these with a worldwide pandemic and extensive money printing. Just lean back, set up a savings plan (dollar-cost average), and wait. Innovation is happening, adoption is happening. Crypto and Metaverse are happening. People right now are just first movers. 

The NFT marketplace leader, OpenSea, just raised US$300M in its latest Series C at a US$13.3B valuation. This makes OpenSea officially a Decacorn (Unicorn = 1B valuation, Decacorn 10B valuation). There is definitely a lot happening in the space of the NFT marketplace as crypto giant Coinbase announced its own marketplace to go live this year. Other major players like Binance and Crypto.com also launched their own marketplace a few months back. With a potential multi-trillion dollar market ahead, there is a lot of space to grow Web3.