RoundlyX may reside in a fickle cryptocurrency space, but it survived that industry’s 2018 downturn, and isn’t looking to change directions now.
Instead, it expects to triple revenue and significantly grow its user base.
“This is our second crypto winter as a company,” founder Andrew Elliot said. “We are not questioning what we do. We know it works like this. It’s very cyclical. Everything in the financial market has only validated Bitcoin.”
Founded in 2017 by Elliot and partner Will Trible, RoundlyX Inc. allows cryptocurrency investors to round their daily purchases to the nearest dollar and apply the amount to their cryptocurrency investments. The Richmond company, formerly known as Coin Savage, has built partnerships with Coinbase, Giving Block and other companies in the cryptocurrency sector.
Cryptocurrency is still an emerging asset class, Elliot said, one that grew tremendously in 2020 and 2021 before declining in 2022. So far, cryptocurrency is up in 2023, but the sector has certainly been volatile — it’s still dealing with financial fallout and viability concerns after FTX’s collapse and the bankruptcies of several leading cryptocurrency companies.
“When you look at crazy ideas that seem like you should avoid them because they are too volatile, it’s usually because they are new,” Elliot said. “Because new ideas are new, it’s easy to hate on them.”
He compared cryptocurrency nowadays with the introduction of mutual funds. In the early 1980s, very few people held mutual funds in their portfolio but now that financial product is the foundation of countless investment portfolios. Elliot said he believes the elements exist to make cryptocurrency an even more important part of such portfolios in the coming years — money has become more digitized, he said, and that is not going to change.
He declined to give RoundlyX’s revenue numbers but said they increased 50% year over year. Advertising revenue saw a decline, he said, but subscription sales increased. It said the company is working to grow its 35,000-user base and $260 million in platform assets through partnerships with “crypto adjacent” companies and additional uses.
In the philanthropic space, for instance, RoundlyX currently allows people to donate their rounded transactions to as many as 1,500 charity organizations through its partnership with Giving Block, a cryptocurrency charity donation platform.
“These charities are stuck and can’t raise the last quarter of their goals,” Elliot said. “We built them a tool that is live right now that they can get donations every single day.”
Now, Elliot said, the company is looking for a sports betting partner that could, in the same way as the charity platform, allow people to add rounded transactions to their sports betting accounts. Elliot said RoundlyX is in talks with several sports betting companies, but nothing has been finalized.
Since its $2.5 million raise last year, Elliot said he’s not sure whether the company will seek additional funds in 2023, particularly given the more challenging funding environment compared with a year ago. It reminds him of the last “cryptocurrency winter,” when investors had backed away from the sector. For now, he said, he’s not looking to change the company’s size, at four employees, including the two founders, and a team of contract developers, with a home base at 1717 E. Cary St.
He would, however, like to see the federal government create more “guardrails” for the industry. Right now, he said, the government is only enforcing violations and not putting more rules to paper. Some regulations, he believes, would bring more confidence to the sector.
“This is not revolutionary,” Elliot said of digital money. “This is evolutionary. It’s just a natural evolution.”
