Crypto startup Concrete recent decamping to New York’s Meatpacking District from the San Francisco Bay Area may be emblematic of a budding digital-asset renaissance in the Big Apple.

More than a dozen crypto-related companies, big and small, have opened or are planning to open offices this year. Much of the change is due to the overall sentiment towards crypto becoming more favourable, as the sector recovers from several years of turmoil. Then, there’s Silicon Valley turning its attention to the latest hot sector - artificial intelligence (AI).

The last crypto bear market, combined with a heightened regulatory crackdown in the US, led to an exodus of crypto startups and founders from the city over the prior two years. Since then, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was hit with setbacks in its prolonged battles with the industry. The approval and launch of Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US earlier this year have also been heralded as a landmark event for the sector. 

“I think very bullish [of] the current outlook,” said Concrete chief executive officer (CEO) Nic Roberts-Huntley.

The industry is also hoping that the upcoming presidential election will lead to a more crypto-friendly White House. Once a critic of the industry, former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has now become one of Bitcoin’s biggest cheerleaders.

“Obviously, if we see a Republican administration come in, it seems as that might be more bullish for crypto more broadly, which is fantastic,” said Roberts-Huntley.

Many well-known crypto leaders, including crypto exchange Kraken’s co-founder Jesse Powell, and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, co-founders of New York-based crypto exchange Gemini, have announced that they’ve donated to Trump.

“Everyone else is just following and saying like, oh, this seems good for crypto,” said Mirza Uddin, head of business development at blockchain startup Injective Labs, from his office in the Flatiron district. “That’s why I think the narrative has shifted like in recent months, even in New York.”

Currently, over 130 crypto firms have New York offices, with 20 specifically targeting decentralised finance, 14 in nonfungible tokens; and 13 in centralised finance, such as crypto exchanges, according to crypto venture fund Archetype, which tracks crypto-related firms based in the city.

“New York City has always been thought as the financial capital…the fashion capital, it’s a culture capital,” so as crypto expanded, it’s only natural for it to be easier to build and hire in the city, said Katherine Wu, a venture partner at Archetype.

Venture fund Foresight, blockchain project Plume, and Seattle-based Eigen Labs - which recently received US$100 million from Andreessen Horowitz - plan to open New York offices in 2024.

They will be joining crypto asset manager Superstate, crypto community focused programme Hadron FC, algorithmic crypto platform Tread.fi, and digital-asset venture funds Dragonfly and Blockchain Capital. All have set up shop in New York this year. 

A week after Concrete moved into the Meatpacking District last month, venture capital fund (VCF) Coinfund hosted a happy hour that more than 300 crypto enthusiasts registered for a stone’s throw from Concrete’s office.

Even The Science of Blockchain Conference, which has been historically hosted at Sanford University since its inception in 2017, will be taking place in New York at Columbia University this month.

“I, as a founder, just gravitate where other founders are innovating on the same space,” said Zorayr Khalapyan, co-founder of Blackwing, who lived in the Bay Area for years. “We saw more crypto companies being built in New York.”

San Francisco focuses more on AI and if he was building a company in that space, Khalapyan said they would still be there. He also spent time overseas in countries including South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam, before finally moving to New York last June.

The crypto wave is reminiscent of 2021, when Coinbase set up its first New York office in Hudson Yards; and Ava Labs, the firm behind Avalanche blockchain, opened a permanent office in the city. That year, even Mayor Eric Adams vowed to make New York a crypto hub.

Back then, there were a lot of founders and trading firms moving to the city, recalled Tarun Chitra, a long-time resident who runs his crypto risk model firm Gauntlet in Manhattan.

There’s even a “Crypto Alley” in the neighborhood of Soho, where a high concentration of crypto firms like Uniswap Labs, dYdX Trading, and OpenSea reside, according to Archetype’s Wu. Archetype is also in the area.

The New York state maintains some of the strictest crypto regulations in the US. Since 2015, the state requires digital asset providers to obtain a licence under a programme called BitLicense, which led to an exodus of crypto firms, including Kraken.

Whether the newfound enthusiasm will last, remains to be seen. There are several uncertainties when it comes to the outcome of the presidential election, and what could happen even if Trump wins.

“It’s a bit too early to see those sort of downstream effects yet,” said Tom Schmidt, a general partner at Dragonfly. “This sort of sentiment shift in politics has happened in the past four months or so; I don’t even know what kind of meaningful policy changes are going to sort of happen downstream.”

  - Bloomberg