I’m proud to say that my family’s heritage is heavily rooted in traditional banking security. Over 20 years ago, my father founded Smart Displayer, a listed Fintech security company that specializes in producing secure bank cards for companies like Apple, Visa, Mastercard and American Express. The company has sold over 10 million units since 2002 and holds 30 patents.
I discovered Bitcoin during an MBA lecture in 2013. Being unfamiliar with blockchain and cryptocurrency, I was immediately intrigued by its design and its ideology. I could see the purpose and the potential of this technology and wanted to integrate myself into the community. I quickly got into contact with some friends at a consulting firm to explore all the possible opportunities and that is how CoolBitX came to be.
I’m proud to say that my family’s heritage is heavily rooted in traditional banking security. Over 20 years ago, my father founded Smart Displayer, a listed Fintech security company that specializes in producing secure bank cards for companies like Apple, Visa, Mastercard and American Express. The company has sold over 10 million units since 2002 and holds 30 patents.
I discovered Bitcoin during an MBA lecture in 2013. Being unfamiliar with blockchain and cryptocurrency, I was immediately intrigued by its design and its ideology. I could see the purpose and the potential of this technology and wanted to integrate myself into the community. I quickly got into contact with some friends at a consulting firm to explore all the possible opportunities and that is how CoolBitX came to be.
CoolBitX launched in early 2014, ready to change the world. The crypto community experiences a devastating blow just a week later when the popular crypto exchange, Mt. Gox, is breached by hackers with losses valued at over $450 million. This proved that online hot wallets were not as secure as they seemed. As a result, this caused many crypto users to start looking for ways to better protect themselves from these types of attacks. Cold, offline storage was their only option and this is where we saw our opportunity.
At the time, the only cold storage options were USB hardware wallets, which were great, however, we felt that they did come with some drawbacks. They were clunky, required a computer connection, not very user-friendly, and were designed to be hidden somewhere at home. They were also vulnerable to supply-chain attacks where criminals could potentially tamper with the devices before getting into the hands of the customer.
Our solution was to create a wallet that was not only secure, but also very portable and user-friendly. Built on the same technology that Smart Displayer had perfected, we introduced a wafer-thin, credit card-sized cold wallet that was highly secure, durable and convenient to use.
We went full-steam ahead and worked tirelessly to develop a prototype that we felt confident with. Eventually, we created an IndieGoGo campaign in hopes to attract supporters. The campaign was successful and attracted over 180 investors.
The CoolWallet had finally made its way to the public and customers were mostly satisfied with its simple and user-friendly form factor. The first iteration of CoolWallet was meant to only support Bitcoin by design, however, we received numerous requests to add support for other coins as well along with some quality of life improvements.
Lead by Kyber Capital, we started a seed round and raised another $500,000 to start the development of the next generation CoolWallet that would include support for more coins among other improvements.
With the funds raised and plans drawn, we started to work on the next generation of CoolWallet in August 2017. Thanks to all the great community feedback, our engineers and developers had all the tools needed to reinvent the world’s best mobile cold wallet. By early 2018, the CoolWallet S was born and ready to ship.
The release of CoolWallet S gained a lot of praise from the crypto community and eventually attracted a mass following. In May of 2018, SBI Holdings (Japan) injected a strategic investment of $13 million into CoolBitX. Soon after, creator of Litecoin, Charlie Lee, gave an official endorsement of CoolWallet S.
Fast forward to 2018 and over 150,000 CoolWallets have been sold worldwide.
With the emergence of the “Travel Rule” brought on by the FATF, our new service Sygna was introduced. Sygna is a first-to-market attestable end-to-end KYC solution for Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) that recently passed cross-border cryptocurrency transaction tests audited by a Big 4 accounting firm. The goal of Sygna is to provide VASPs a simplified process of meeting compliance standards between the traditional financial industry and improve the reputation of the virtual currency industry.
In February of 2020, CoolBitX raised $16.75 million in a series B funding round led by SBI Holdings. Other partners include Monex, Binsonic and the National Development Fund of Taiwan. The funding will help expand Sygna beyond the APAC region to help provide FATF-compliant solutions to VASPs around the world. More exciting features and updates are also planned and will be added to their Bluetooth hardware wallet, CoolWallet S.
As our team continues to expand internationally, it is our mission to always be evolving and improving our products to provide the best in security and convenience for our customers. Since day one, we have been humbled and inspired by the support from the community. Without industry support, CoolWallet S and Sygna would not be what they are today.
