Recent Updates
The Research Committee has been looking into various companies and industries throughout the semester. See below for recent topics.
The Research Committee has been looking into various companies and industries throughout the semester. See below for recent topics.
By Leah Golubchik
Leah Golubchik is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, studying finance and real estate in Wharton and international studies with a Russian minor in the College as part of the Huntsman Program. As a member of the Wharton Undergraduate Founders and Funders Association, Leah aims to share new developments in the tech and finance sectors with the Wharton community. This upcoming summer, Leah will pursue these passions as a Private Equity Intern for Active Capital Company, an Amsterdam-based firm that specializes in manufacturing and tech investments.
Booming developments in the cryptocurrency realm over the past few years have convinced countless people to dive headfirst into this new craze of digital ownership. Whether utilized as a fun hobby or a way to make a living, cryptocurrency has had a massive influence on the over 300 million crypto users worldwide, and its impact continues to skyrocket (1). Thousands of cryptocurrencies have been created since Bitcoin in 2009, such as Ethereum and Dogecoin, and this number continues to climb (2). However, because of this massive growth rate, there has been an infrastructure issue behind this technology. Since millions of transactions are issued everyday, people often encounter inconveniences when trying to buy or sell crypto, and when converting these digital currencies back to money in their bank account.
MoonPay was founded in 2018 in Miami, FL by Ivan Soto-Wright, who is now CEO of the company. MoonPay acts as the infrastructure to support the colossal scale of mainstream cryptocurrency. This crypto-trading platform authorizes users to buy and sell different types of digital and fiat currency on its site. MoonPay also partners with other companies in this sphere so that they can offer even more diverse services to their customers, such as crypto wallets, exchanges, decentralized finance platforms, and NFT marketplaces (3). To make the process of buying these currencies seamless, MoonPay accepts conventional payment methods such as debit and credit cards, mobile wallets (such as ApplePay), and bank transfers (4).
MoonPay is predicted to expand significantly in the coming years. Just three years after the company was founded, they were able to raise $555 million in their Series A round of venture capital financing. This investment was carried out by investment management firms Tiger Global and Coatue, who both valued the company at $3.4 billion. According to Soto-Wright, this capital will help MoonPay scale its global footprint and give more people access to this emerging crypto economy. So far, transaction volume on MoonPay's platform has increased 35-fold in the past two years and more than $2 billion in transactions have been processed, and with this new capital, these numbers will continue to grow (5).
Soto-Wright's wish is that MoonPay will eventually act as a platform that will make crypto easy and accessible for everyone. He explained his vision for MoonPay, saying that, "Eventually we will get to this place where it's frictionless to move any amount of value around anywhere in the world, and costs move as close as possible to zero." Soto-Wright explained that his next goal for MoonPay is to streamline the process of trading NFTs, the newest trend in this area of digital ownership. Soto-Wright explains that he has already begun this transition, as his platform has been used by Jimmy Fallon, Post Malone, Diplo, DJ Khaled, Snoop Dogg, and many other celebrities as an NFT trading platform (6).