Bitcoin Blow As Coinbase And Ripple Crash Out Of US Startup Top 10 - Forbes

Bitcoin's epic 2017 bull run propelled many cryptocurrency startups into the stratosphere, but most have now crashed back down to earth.

The bitcoin price, which rose from under $1,000 per bitcoin to almost $20,000 over the course of 2017, fell sharply last year before rebounding somewhat so far in 2019.

Now, it's been revealed bitcoin and cryptocurrency investor darlings Coinbase, a San Francisco-based crypto exchange, and Ripple, the payments group behind the XRP cryptocurrency, have crashed out of a top 10 U. S. startups list for 2019–both dropping over 20 places.

Meanwhile, Gemini Trust Company, the custodian of the Winklevoss twins' Gemini crypto exchange, and ethereum development firm ConsenSys dropped out of the list entirely from the 25th and the 26th spots respectively last year.

Both Coinbase and Ripple have struggled recently as competition, regulation and lower-than-hoped-for bitcoin and crypto adoption have weighed on their bottom lines.

Last month, London-based Barclays bank ended its relationship with Coinbase which began in March last year as it expanded into Europe.

Meanwhile, the price of Ripple's XRP has slumped some 25% so far this year, while bitcoin has risen around 200%, with bitcoin's dominance, a measure of its weighting compared the rest of the cryptocurrency market, now at 70% according to CoinMarketCap data—its highest in 18 months.

Ripple has struggled to keep up with expectations over recent months after a flurry of major financial services companies signed up to its products last year.

Elsewhere on LinkedIn's U. S. startup top 10, Snowflake Computing, a cloud-based data-warehousing startup, came in at number one, while crypto-friendly investment app Robinhood placed seventh.

This is the last year that both Coinbase and Ripple will be eligible for the list, which excludes companies over seven years old. Both Coinbase and Ripple were founded in 2012.

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