What should I do with my company's money?
For a great overview of a standard treasury management / investment policy for startups, check out the SIPS (Standard Investment Policy for Startups) by InterPrime:
Banking Partners
For your company (note: we recommend having two bank accounts for diversification in case one is temporarily frozen you still have capital to run your business). Here are a number of banks that have partnered with our portfolio companies previously.
If you have any vendor recommendations or feedback on the vendors below, please feel free to send it via the Comment Box.
Signature Bank
Signature Bank is a full-service commercial bank with offices in the five boroughs of New York City, focusing on serving the financial needs of privately owned businesses, their owners and senior managers – a group of clients who often find themselves underserved by the area’s larger financial institutions. Contact: Client Care They're the best crypto focused bank if you can get an account there. Sarmen Saryan - Digital Asset Banking (SSaryan@signatureNY.com). Typically don't bank payment processors, reserve account for stablecoins, and retail-facing exchange activities. No fees. Multi-currency accounts available in Q4 2019.
Silvergate Bank
Teddy Hanson, Fintech Account Manager thanson@silvergatebank.com
Customers Bank
Customers Bank is looking to bank crypto companies. They have a crypto-native blockchain team and offer no account maintenance fees and low wire fees. They use the same real-time settlement network as Signature.
Robb Layfield (ex-Silvergate) - rlayfield@customersbank.com
Metropolitan Bank
Metropolitan Bank’s goal is to provide our customers with the best community banking experience possible. They remain committed to the idea that bank-customer relationships should be personal and they make an effort to know their clientele, and adapt our service to best meet their business and personal needs.
The Provident Bank
Provident is "building a crypto bank from scratch" to provide digital-first banking and API access to digital currency clients.
From July 2019 press release:
The Provident is entering into digital assets having worked with one of the top compliance consulting firms, Treliant, LLC. Treliant advises the financial services industry on various compliance and regulatory issues including policy, regulations and operational risk. Additionally, The Provident is using Bitfury’s Crystal blockchain analytics platform as part of its seamless onboarding process. The Regtech partnership will also help ensure that new clients at The Provident have a fully compliant AML program in place, and will be utilizing Crystal’s advanced transaction monitoring solution to provide more visibility into their activities on the public blockchain. Once reviewed and approved, a dedicated Relationship Manager will be assigned to each client.
Bank Frick
Bank Frick is a private bank based in the Principality of Liechtenstein with its headquarters in Balzers. Bank Frick's roots lie in private banking and the development of financial services for an international clientele. The bank is now strategically expanding its digital banking services business, focusing on private clients, corporate and fund clients.
Please note that we do not serve US companies or US Persons.
Basically, the core service we’re offering are simple corporate accounts. However, thanks to your experience in various business areas such as blockchain, fintech or other innovative business models, we’re willing and capable to offer such service also for companies which are facing high barriers to opening accounts with either neobanks or even established banking institutions.
On top of the classical corporate account we offer securities as well as crypto-asset trading and custody. Additionally, credit financing or capital markets financing are modular on-top services, depending on the individual case and circumstances.
Please also note, that in case of any involvement of US persons – be it as UBO, shareholder, member of management or even only as an authorized person so access accounts via read-only or full functionality – we’ll need to apply a deeper due diligence as well as separate internal approval processes. In such cases the services we can offer (if at all) heavily depends on the matters of fact at hand.
Finally, be aware that our tailored service offering cannot be compared to an ordinarily scalable offering and hence our fees might not match the structure your portfolio companies get offered by a bank around the corner. Nevertheless, given our extensive experience in servicing innovative business models we’re predestined to certainly add-value in specific cases.
Contact: Fabio Tommaschetti (ICO) Mauro Casellini
Fieldpoint
Fieldpoint Private is a fast-growing wealth advisory and private banking boutique serving ultra-high-net-worth families and institutions.
Christian Gallo [mailto:cgallo@fieldpointprivate.com]
Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the largest and oldest banks in America. Surprisingly, they seem to be relatively friendly to crypto clients, provided you're not doing anything too crazy.
Quontic Bank
From Nov 2019 Coindesk article:
"A little-known, NYC-based bank called “Quontic” has become the latest of a handful of US-based financial institutions to have agreed to work with the cryptocurrency sector, according to a recent report from CoinDesk. The bank, which has just $420 million in assets (JPMorgan,by comparison, has more than $30 trillion), opened a checking account for an unnamed Bitcoin ATM firm–its first crypto client–several weeks ago, and claims to be in contract negotiations to open accounts for another new cryptocurrency company, which was also unnamed."
From The Block Genesis:
For personal banking: Ally Financial and Radius Bank are known to be crypto friendly
Silicon Valley Bank
“We had a bad experience with SVB. Strongly recommend avoiding them. We wasted ~4 months trying to setup a relationship with them and they were comatose level responsive. This always makes me nervous with banks because if something came up, it’s important for them to be responsive. We've had a much better experience with Field Point.” - A Pantera Portfolio Founder
Treasury Management
Amber Group
We help our clients earn passive income using their cryptocurrencies. Our high-performance infrastructure enable us to build and implement systematic processes that aim to deliver absolute returns uncorrelated to market movements, while allowing clients to retain their preferred exposure. Our treasury management program spans multiple currencies, with denominations in BTC, BCH, ETH, XRP, EOS, USDT, and USDC.
Contact Michael Wu, CEO at michael.wu@amberaigroup.io for more information.
Wave Financial
Wave Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor, provides compliant access to crypto backed loans and bitcoin derivative markets.
Wave Financial's crypto lending strategy seeks to generate an attractive risk adjusted yield through stablecoin lending while factoring in the associated credit and counterparty risks.
Email Tom Lombardi at tom@wavegp.com or book an appointment here.