Coinsetter CEO and founder Jaron Lukasiewicz sells company, takes time out in California

One of the most avantgarde members of the Bitcoin technology fraternity has exited the industry following the sale of successful New York-based Bitcoin exchange Coinsetter (acquired by Kraken) last month in what has been widely noted to be the largest M&A deal in Bitcoin history despite the terms of the transaction having remained undisclosed.

Jaron Lukasiewicz, a young, highly intelligent Bitcoin technology proponent, sold Coinsetter to Kraken in mid-January, the rationale for the acquisition being Kraken’s drive to enter and expand across the United States, and where better to start than New York, the state in which financial services superintendent Benjamin Lawsky began issuing the BitLicense – a regulatory license – to Bitcoin exchanges in 2014.

Speaking to FinanceFeeds CEO Andrew Saks-McLeod yesterday, Mr. Lukasiewicz revealed that he has retreated to the West Coast in order to enjoy some well deserved time out, also having sold Cavirtex ( an acronym for Canadian Virtual Exchange) at the same time.

“I recently sold Coinsetter and am on the west coast taking a breather for the next few months” he said.

Mr. Lukasiewicz founded Coinsetter in 2012, at the very height of Bitcoin’s rush to popularity, albeit in very different circumstances to today, where the technology behind Bitcoin, particularly Blockchain, is regarded as an institutional technological solution and is being widely adopted by major banks, a subject which FinanceFeeds has investigated in detail.

A far cry from the days of volatile values and the mavericks and anarchists that championed its cause in its inaugural years, Bitcoin has become an exchange-traded instrument which is based on a technology that has attracted record investments from experienced venture capital investors.

Indeed, in order to stake out its position as a mainstay of the future, Coinsetter concentrated on institutional clients from its outset in 2012, thus removing any of the pitfalls of exchanges that never made it to the position in which they can be accepted as both a fully regulated Wall Street fixture, or a pinnacle of Blockchain technology.

A matter that Mr. Lukasiewicz has been well aware of for a considerable length of time is the application of Blockchain database technology beyond the mining of Bitcoin. He explained this to Andrew Saks-McLeod during a meeting in New York in the summer of last year, and was indeed correct in his predictions.

“It is essential to understand how the Blockchain technology is competitive, and who is using it. There is growth in the remittance use these days, so it is slowly displacing Western Union and MoneyGram at sometimes similar rates, and can be even done at much less cost, a tenth, but no consumers really try that. Companies are also trying to rival Transferwise which is taking Bitcoin into direct competition with deliverable FX” said Mr. Lukasiewicz.

“If bitcoin comes to you from somewhere, you don’t have to trust the institution or counterparty, and can credit an account quickly because of that. When you start creating Blockchains or tokens for fiat currencies that can be turned around really quickly and can speed up bank transfers which is important for the FX industry, but for this to work, trust relationships have to be built up between all institutions.” – Jaron Lukasiewicz, CEO & Founder, Coinsetter

The institions did indeed go down this route, and yesterday, following investment into the research of Bitcoin technology by several large banks, JPMorgan began conducting live tests involving the accounts of approximately 2,200 clients, by using Blockchain as a means of transferring funds internationally by automated means, marking Mr. Lukasiewicz’s perspective as absolutely accurate.

Mr. Lukasiewicz may well have had the technical abilities and entrepreneurial mind which has led his startup in such a new sector to success, however far from being a maverick who wished to circumvent the traditional banking system, he actually comes from the institutional banking industry.

In 2007, Mr. Lukasiewicz began his career at SPB Partners, where he gained an overview of the Private Equity space, before joining JPMorgan in 2008 as an investment banker.

In 2009, Mr. Lukasiewicz moved to Sanders Morris Harris and spent two years at the company as an investment banker before moving to The CapStreet Group in Houston, Texas as a Private Equity Associate.

The mix of experience between the financial industry and private equity gave him a very solid basis for entering the fintech startup arena, and in 2011 he co-founded Ticketometer with his brother Ardon in Houston Texas before making his big break in 2012 with the establishment of Coinsetter, which remains today one of the most prominent Bitcoin facilities in the world.

Photograph: Central Coast, between Point Mugu and Monterey Bay, California