The number of blockchain companies in Israel increased by 30 percent in 2019 according to a report by the Israeli Bitcoin Association published a few days ago which we are reading more about in our crypto news today.
The report revealed that there were about 150 active blockchain companies in 2019 while at the end of 2018 the number was at 113. Out of these companies, only 63 are still operating today and there’s no available information about the rest of them. The association suggested that this is because the companies didn’t survive in 2019. The report didn’t provide much data on the number of employees as well for the companies but it said that the staff size dropped dramatically in 2019 as compared with 2018 and 2017. The data showed that most of the blockchain companies didn’t have more than 10 employees.
The report further revealed that the majority of the companies were startups that operated about three years where 30 percent of the current active companies were founded in 2017 and 30 percent in 2018. In regards to financing the sources, 44 percent of crypto and blockchain companies in Israel were self-funded in 2019 while about 42 percent of them raised funds from investors. In the meantime, 7 percent of the companies rely on independent income to finance the operations. Israel is known as a blockchain hub and ranked 49th out of 190 on the ease of doing business index according to Doing Business 2019 reports by the World Bank.
The overall score includes areas of difficulty for businesses such as paying taxes where Israel ranked 90th out of 190. Another issue was enforcing the contracts for which Israel ranked 90th. In August 2019, news broke that the Capital Market, Insurance and Saving Authority which is a division of Israel’s Ministry of Finance was looking to accelerate the process of procuring licenses for the blockchain and fintech companies in the country. The authority aims to foster local competition by licensing more fintech companies.
As per the recent reports, According to the Israeli news publication Globes and its reports on September 18, the Israeli startup GK8 managed to raise around $4 million in a funding round which was led by Discount Capital, a venture arm of one of the three largest banks in Israel.
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