Fintech is a broad church that encompasses veteran Financial Services executives leveraging technology, Millennial developers using growth hacking to move money, idealists working on financial inclusion and folks with a deep belief in math as better than trusting institutions.
Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum hails from Toronto and I am on record with my belief that Ethereum is probably a game-changing platform. I write “probably” only because they are right now in “show me the code” mode.
So it is not a surprise to find Decentral.ca in Toronto. This is some mix of event manager, incubator and co-working space that advertises itself as:
“Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, Decentral is a home to tech start-ups and innovative entrepreneurs that focus on disruptive and decentralized technologies. Decentral hosts Bitcoin and Ethereum meetups and features a two-way bitcoin ATM on the premises.”
Maybe it is having that big neighbor to the South that makes you think different.
One metric of local Fintech activity that I track is the Fintech MeetUp by location. On that score, Toronto looks like a minnow among the whales of London and New York:
Toronto Fintech MeetUp has 600 Members, well below London & New York which each have over 3,000 Members.
Yes, but in 1975 there were only a tiny number of people at Homebrew Computer Club meetings that were planting the seeds of the PC disruption. It is possible that the Crypto 2.0 re-decentralization of the Internet will be as important. If so, we may look at Toronto as the place where it all started.
Their Decentral Mentor Network is a good Whos Who of Bitcoin, Crypto 2.0 and StartUp gurus.
The two Crypto 2.0 startups making waves – with different fundamental theses – are Ethereum and Blockstream. Another interesting one is CryptoCapital.
I went looking for Crypto 2.0 startups in Toronto but found a vibrant Fintech startup scene that was in all the major categories and stretched all across Canada.
This site has some good data on Fintech in Canada. Canada has a lot more active Fintech scene than I had imagined.
Another good site is InnovationToronto (not Fintech specific).
William Mougayer is startup mentor who also maintains some good content on the Canada Fintech scene.
Canada has a big an vibrant Fintech scene. I am sure I am only skimming the surface with that list. Who am I missing?