Imperial Student Launches Digital Currency Lending Start-up

A recent Department of Computing graduate has co-founded TradeMore, a start-up focusing on enabling Bitcoin lending and borrowing.

Stewart Douglas received his MSc (Computing Science) degree this year and now runs TradeMore alongside Rory Greig, an Electronic Engineering graduate from Durham University who previously worked at Goldman Sachs.

The team presented at the launch of the Imperial Bitcoin Forum in September, a cross college group founded in conjunction with Entrepreneur First (EF).

Stewart and Rory are both members of the current EF cohort, and met at a hackathon organised by EF in February.

They found that they had a mutual interest at the intersection of finance and technology, and started working together. They decided to focus on digital currencies as Stewart was completing his MSc individual project on a proof-of-concept of a Bitcoin lending platform.

The ability to lend and borrow is not part of current Bitcoin protocols, but the team say they see it as crucial to growing and maturing the nascent digital currency. Ultimately, they would like to grow TradeMore in to a universal bank for all digital currencies, where any individual or organisation can borrow, and any holder or digital currency can earn a return. Their initial focus is lending to Bitcoin market makers operating on exchanges.

Stewart’s MSc project supervisor Dr William Knottenbelt commented: "It is a testimony to the quality of Stewart's MSc project work and the effectiveness of the EF model that a related spin-out business has been launched within such a short period of Stewart completing our the MSc (Computing Science) course. Through activities such as the Imperial Bitcoin Forum we hope to encourage much more of this sort of innovation in the future."

Matt Clifford of Entrepreneur First added: “"We're very excited about TradeMore. It's a fantastic example of how the technology that people develop during their degrees can become the foundation of a startup. I look forward to Entrepreneur First making many more investments in Imperial Computing graduates in the year ahead."