From ICO boom to crypto bust
Ljubljana, 17 December - Slovenia experienced the full trajectory of the rapid boom-and-bust of blockchain technology. After Slovenian startups raised an estimated US$80m with cryptocurrency tokens in 2017 and the authorities set out to make the country a blockchain haven, 2018 was a year of reckoning.
Ljubljana
Logo of the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Photo: Anže Malovrh/STA
Some startups that bootstrapped their business by issuing tokens in initial coin offerings (ICOs) followed the global trend of disappearing, among them Cofound.it, which had raised US$15m in 2017. But unlike many, Cofound.it at least returned money to investors.
Yet others diversified, including Viberate. The company had set out to create a global platform for music industry professionals. That is still the plan, but its current product is not crypto-enabled and it has decided to set aside a significant share of the EUR 10m it collected with its ICO into real estate development.
The biggest and oldest Slovenian crypto player, the exchange Bitstamp changed hands as its Slovenian owners sold the company to the Belgian investment firm NXMH in October for an undisclosed sum believed to be several hundred million dollars.
Perhaps the most devastating blow to crypto in the eyes of the public came with the news that Nicehash, a platform for mining bitcoin, lost EUR 56m worth of cryptocurrency due to a hack in December 2017. The company partially compensated its users, but by the time the compensation came bitcoin was worth a fraction of what it fetched at its peak.
Blockchain and crypto were also supposed to be the cornerstones of Slovenia as a reference country for digital technology in Europe, a major policy point for the previous government. The new government appears to have largely abandoned this platform.