LogInBitwave CEO Patrick White has told us about the company's history, discussed their products and solutions, and talked about working with partners.
Introduction
I’m Pat White, Co-Founder and CEO of Bitwave. Before founding a couple of SaaS companies, I spent more than 10 years building enterprise software at Intuit, Microsoft, Five9, and Cisco. I also launched an enterprise software consulting firm (Ally Software) in 2009 and created Synata, an enterprise search engine that Cisco acquired in 2016.
I was one of those people who became really excited about the idea of distributed ledger technology from the start. I’ve contributed code to the Bitcoin core node and participated in DeFi since the early days.
The Story of Bitwave
Bitwave was started with a simple idea – as businesses begin to adopt digital assets, they’ll run into a whole host of problems, including accounting, tax, smart contract development, and more. Finance teams in particular are facing an unprecedented challenge thanks to the growing adoption of digital assets, like cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
Our mission is to transform unmanaged risk into a strategic business advantage for enterprise companies and allow them to seize the opportunities created by digital asset adoption.
When Bitwave first started, we were hyper-focused on the engineering challenge itself. I was building most of the back-end infrastructure that allowed us to scale – and some of that core work is still the foundation of Bitwave today. My Co-Founder, Amy, was working alongside me doing sales and marketing. So, 2 of us in the early days. Today, we’re a growing team of 60+ with a fully-distributed, global footprint.
We closed a $15M Series A – led by HackVC and Blockchain Capital – at the end of last year to really expand our platform into a more institutional focus. We saw a need in the ecosystem for a more comprehensive set of processes, controls, and technology to bring trust into the new digital asset financial system.
We’re continuing to expand Bitwave to serve that need by sitting at the intersection of audit, accounting, tax, and reporting for Web3. SignalFire, Valor Equity Partners, Arca, Pulsar Trading, Alumni Ventures Blockchain Fund, and Hutt Capital also participated in that round in Q4 of last year.
The Company's Solutions
Today’s accounting software was not built to handle digital assets. That’s the biggest challenge we solve for our customers.
CFOs, accountants, and financial teams are often looking for a way to seamlessly bring digital assets onto their existing tracking systems. We work with these teams to deliver a range of options – from a simple, “out-of-the-box” tax and accounting platform to a highly-customized solution that can handle multiple subsidiaries, wallets, and exchanges.
A large-scale enterprise, like Target, might have millions of transactions each month. They’re paying vendors, paying employees, and of course, receiving payments every second. So Target probably had a small army of people handling these transactions for them across their thousands of stores.
But now, thanks to digital assets, smaller web3 businesses – like NFT projects and DeFi protocols – are also faced with millions of monthly transactions. And they might only have one or two people responsible for the financial success of that team.
So, that’s where Bitwave really helps teams of all sizes understand their financial landscape and save time with our automation rules engine. Depending on the types of digital assets and blockchains used, there can also be a whole host of additional complexities for the business. We help businesses navigate all of these challenges.
The Partners
We help businesses of all sizes – from Fortune 100 Web2 companies to early-stage crypto-native teams. In fact, some of the smallest companies we work with have the highest volume of crypto transactions. It’s going to be really exciting when our Web2 partners catch up to the on-chain data volumes of these five and ten-person Web3 teams!
Some of the most recognizable blockchains, Web3 gaming studios, and NFT projects trust Bitwave to enable success for their financial teams. We're thrilled to work with some of the best customers in the world – like Polygon, Ava Labs, OpenSea, Magic Eden, The Sandbox, Mythical Games, Blockdaemon, Art Blocks, and more.
On stage at GDC this year, we announced that AAA Web3 game studio, Shrapnel, chose Bitwave to streamline their crypto accounting operations.
We help any organization with on-chain data make sense of their transactions.
Future Plans
We just announced the launch of a CPE education platform called BitwaveU, so we continue to be incredibly focused on driving Web3 education for finance professionals. Whether you’re a CPA who’s never bought Bitcoin or you have a full mining rig in your spare bedroom – there’s content for you on BitwaveU to stay current with the world of digital asset accounting.
From an operational side, we’re incredibly focused on working directly with blockchains to natively integrate transaction data for our customers with the highest degree of data integrity possible.
Not all blockchain integrations are created equal – and our customers choose and stay with us because we are the only enterprise-focused platform that works to ensure audit-ready compliance at every step. We’ll continue to focus on education. And we’ll continue to focus on building.