currency there. Then, the user can link her exchange account to Coinigy with an application programming interface, and indicate that she would like to be able to control her exchange account from Coinigy.
The startup’s Web-based software can currently be used on computers and Android devices. Coinigy plans to introduce a mobile app for iOS devices later this year, Urben says.
The software features charting tools designed to help users track the prices that Bitcoin, Ether, and other digital currencies are trading for on the dozens of exchanges Coinigy supports. It has also built several apps on top of the core software platform. One of them, ArbMatrix—a reference to the term arbitrage—is a heat map of price differences between exchanges.
“Arbitrage is the idea that markets aren’t 100 percent efficient and there’s going to be price discrepancies,” Urben says. “You buy on the lower [priced] exchange, transferring that fund to a higher [priced] exchange and selling it. If you have accounts in both [exchanges], you can take advantage. This is kind of the reason Coinigy was built in the first place.”
It’s also possible to create rules telling Coinigy to buy or sell a virtual currency if its price rises above or drops below a certain amount.
Users cannot store digital currency on Coinigy. Instead, their funds are either stored on exchanges or in a personal electronic wallet that’s separate from the exchanges.
Coinigy makes money by charging users a annual subscription fee of $185 to use the software, Urben says. The startup’s other major revenue stream involves selling historical Bitcoin data from exchanges, mostly to institutional traders. This information can be useful if someone has developed an algorithm and wants to test it using historical data, he says.
“You’re back-testing,” Urben says. “What would’ve happened, and was that more profitable than just buying [a digital currency] and holding it? Because that’s how you have to justify” using the new algorithm.
Depending on the quantity of information desired, historical data sets can cost anywhere from a few cents to thousands of dollars.
Urben declined to share specific revenue figures, but says Conigy is currently profitable on a month-to-month basis.
The startup raised $500,000 across two rounds of funding in 2014 and 2015. Coinigy is exploring raising another round but its plans are not set in stone, Urben says.
The company has seven “core team members,” some of whom work in places as far-flung as France and the Czech Republic, he says. Coinigy plans to add three more software developers, and for now is more focused on continuing to build its software tools than sales and marketing efforts.
“Due to the kind of business [we have], we don’t really need more” business development staff, Urben says. “That stuff is in the future. We can go after it once the market expands even more. Right now, we need to get more product out the door.”
