Trustatom has raised early seed funding to the tune of $100,000 with which it will launch CredyCo, a cryptographic due diligence service built on top of bitcoin’s blockchain.
The round was led by a group of investors that included entrepreneur Brian Cartmell and Gyft co-founder Vinny Lingham.
Speaking to CoinDesk, Trustatom co-founder Yurii Rashkovskii framed the news as an early step in connecting the technology of bitcoin with “the real world”.
“The most important thing from our perspective is to find users for bitcoin and blockchain technology outside of the traditional and core use of bitcoin,” Rashkovskii said, adding:
“Unlike most of the projects that are active in the space today that cater mostly to the same bitcoin community, what we try to do here is expand that and find applications for blockchain technology.”
CredyCo will be one such solution. Built on technology provided by the Canadian-based Trustatom, it is a document verification ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) that Lingham envisions as a niche solution for the venture capital industry.
The company describes the service as using “a smart contracts and identity technology built on top of the blockchain to ensure the credibility and irrefutability of all statements”.
Targeting venture capitalists
Trustatom ID is the heart of the company’s proprietary technology. The company describes it as a “mobile privacy-respecting identity and credentials application”, helping businesses automate ‘know your customer’ practices and allowing their customers to authorize transactions with cryptographic signatures.
CredyCo will be an SaaS built on that technology, and will aim to automate document-based due diligence processes for companies seeking funding.
For example, firms will be able to record their financial and growth metrics securely, allowing investors to more efficiently assess companies’ credibility and thereby potentially shortening the closure time and increasing the number of successful deals.
Rashkovskii said the service will give companies seeking funding “a strong connection to identities and their credentials and just about anything that can be signed by a third party about you”.
“If you think about the investment market, or rather, the way they have been operating, it hasn’t really changed much in the last decade,” he said.
He added:
“This is a way to get this portable trust that enables bitcoin in the first place, and apply it to something different and new using what already exists for things outside the monetary aspects.”
Building bitcoin use cases
Lingham, who is also a Trustatom advisor, was bullish on the potential of blockchain applications, echoing Rashkovskii’s thoughts on closing the gap that separates bitcoin users from mainstream consumers.
“The reality is that the price is not going to move until you find actual functional utility for bitcoins,” Lingham said. “Transferring value of bitcoins is not very interesting, in a sense, because the value fluctuates over time.”
The Gyft CEO has found success with his mobile gift card startup and its growing bitcoin customer base.
However, on the price and functionality of bitcoin, he added:
“There’s not enough volume to make this thing liquid enough – that’s why it’s so volatile.”
That is also why it is imperative that entrepreneurs and developers in the space begin to shift focus to consumers outside of bitcoin, Lingham said, by building products and services with industrial use cases like time stamping, or establishing and transferring property rights.
“Blockchain and modern cryptographic tricks and schemes allow for new kinds of services to flourish,” said software developer and Trustatom advisor Oleg Andreev. “Companies that provide you with an infrastructure, tools and apps, yet almost completely reduce liability and counter-party risks for their clients.”
He added:
“’Outsourcing’ soon will stop being an ‘unfortunate tradeoff’ and will be regarded simply as a mutually beneficial cooperation of professionals.”
Images via Trustatom, Shutterstock