Tangany Recap 2020

Tangany Recap 2020

2020 will be remembered as the year when a new virus mutation first hit China and shortly after the whole world. Still, under the omnipresent consuming COVID-19 topic, a lot has happened, especially in the European blockchain ecosystem.

While most European countries decided to create a register for crypto custodians and crypto exchanges, Germany went one step further and introduced a dedicated ‘crypto custody license’, which could be considered as the most strict regulatory regime in the EU and maybe far beyond.

Tangany entered with those two major topics in its third year of existence. After closing 2019 cash-positive and with strong fundamentals (in terms of the team, processes, sales, and a reliable product) all signals were set for growth. 2020 should have been the year of scaling. And without spoiling too much, it mostly was.

The 2020 Recap

2020 started quite as expected by closing our seed investment round led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and followed by three business angels. We probably managed to catch one of the last physical meetings at a German notary before the first lockdown. A huge milestone for Tangany.

We have increased the team size accordingly to our plans and had the unexpected challenge, to grow together as a larger team without seeing each other physically too often — well more like never. So, we organized different online events with casual online games (mostly Among Us), weekly meetings and caught some of the rare opportunities when it was allowed to enter a beer garden in Munich. These small activities helped us to grow together, to get to know the team, and to work connected.

In parallel, the new German ‘crypto custody license’ was introduced to crypto custodians like Tangany. This helped us to sharpen our product further and get it labeled more clearly (see our custody solution for digital assets). This was also a huge evolution for a tech startup to become a regulated financial service institution. The invested amount of time and resources are immense, yet still worth it. It helped us to take the next step of evolution. And we — eventually — submitted our application in July 2020 to BaFin and Bundesbank, containing more than 700 newly created pages of documentation, processes, definitions, and employee manuals.

In September 2020 we were nominated as one of the most innovative FinTech startups in the category ‘seed’. Two of our colleagues managed to travel to Frankfurt to be physically present and to receive the award as Tangany was selected as the most innovative German FinTech startup. This was a huge honor and confirmation of all the efforts we have invested in the last years.

Two months later, in November 2020, Martin — one of our co-founders — was selected to join the board of Bundesblock e.V., where Tangany has been a member since shortly after its creation. This was another huge honor for Martin in particular, but also for Tangany. We are convinced that associations such as the Bundesblock are crucial to drive blockchain adoption and to prioritize blockchain on politicians’ agendas.

In the meantime, our product team has been working very hard to create our complementary product ‘Cold Wallet’, which perfectly goes along with our successful ‘Warm Wallets (as a Service)’ product. This enables us to be a crypto custodian for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other assets such as Binance Tokens, EOS, Tezos and many more (learn more about our Cold Wallet product).

Both fully white-labeled and managed by Tangany. This supports our mission to provide all kinds of solutions required to create stunning blockchain-based products and services with our partners.

2020 in Figures

We also want to share some figures about Tangany in 2020.

In 2020 Tangany was utilized by 18 partners (= B2B clients). From which 3 are regulated financial institutions. This is a partner growth of 200% year on year. This only includes active partners. Some of them are non-disclosed.

Most of the partners are based in Germany or Europe but also people from all over the world trust the Tangany products. Tangany solution is worldwide acknowledged for its quality and reliability. That is something that makes us very proud.

The Tangany team has grown by more than 100% and is still fully located in Munich, Germany. All tasks from product development to sales are done in Munich. Especially the tech development is only done by Tangany employees without outsourcing for security reasons.

After introducing our Cold Wallet product, it gained quite fast relevant share compared to our Warm Wallet API solution. More than one-third of all assets under custody are stored in Cold Wallets. This number exceeded our expectations.

The assets, that are stored with Tangany, are reflecting the full range of known assets on blockchain. The majority are security tokens based on Ethereum, but also cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether and utility tokens have a high share on the distribution cake. Stable-coins are rarely stored with Tangany.

Although Tangany turned from a tech company to a regulated financial service institute, tech is still our DNA. The following figures are related to more technical aspects.

In 2020 the uptime of the service was over 99.6%, which is slightly higher than guaranteed with our highest service tier. This is an increase of 0.17% compared to 2019.

More than 240,000 transactions were executed in 2020. This is a huge increase compared to 2019 by more than 500%. By running our own node infrastructure, this was handled automatically and highly reliably.

By taking a detailed look into networks, it gets clear that most of the transactions were done on partner’s private blockchains. As there is usually no network fee, transactions are done without limitations.

On Ethereum smart contracts were a huge trigger for transactions on the blockchain, while on Bitcoin only 15% of all transactions were executed. Mostly before the starting bullrun from October 2020.

2020 has been an intense year for us. Despite all negative environmental influences, we managed to succeed in our goals. We are looking forward to 2021 to become an even greater year and hoping that blockchain, in general, will gain more adoption.

Also, read our latest press releases about our cooperation with CM Equity AG (Asset Manager) and WEG Bank AG with its crypto label TEN 31 Bank (Full regulated Bank).

Outlook 2021

Tangany is a reliable white-label custodian for digital assets. That is our mission and our road to which we stick as we want to enable our partners to use blockchain, digital assets, and crypto-based solutions.

With the upcoming German crypto securities (‘Kryptowertpapier’), EU MiCA (Market in Crypto-assets) regulation and a potential Digital Euro (based on blockchain or not), there are many new playing fields on which Tangany will provide white-labeled solutions.

We wish all our partners and the European blockchain ecosystem a great year ahead.