2017 and 2020 have a lot in common in the crypto world, specifically meteoric rises in price of major tokens like Bitcoin and Ether.

But the two bull markets were different in one major way:

In 2017, the price increase was largely driven by increasing interest from retail investors, while 2020’s surge was associated with increased institutional involvement.

This increased institutional interest in crypto has created dozens of new opportunities for startups like Skytale to step in and serve the market.

Skytale, a portfolio company of Berlin-based venture studio Next Big Thing, is a tracking platform for small and medium-sized enterprises — small businesses, investors, family offices, and more — to manage their crypto assets.

They recently chose Magic to handle their authentication needs, and I spoke to Skytale co-founder Enrico Mariotti to learn how Magic is helping them ship faster and manage customers’ crypto assets.

#Demystifying crypto tracking

Despite crypto’s rise in popularity, Enrico says the industry is extremely fragmented and confusing for companies who want to get involved. He estimates that companies are losing “$1 billion due to fraudulent & manual transaction tracking.”

By securely integrating with major crypto exchanges (Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, and Uniswap so far), Skytale aggregates a business’s crypto portfolio in one central place. They then classify your crypto transactions in different categories — like Mint does for personal spending — and export the data to Quickbooks or another accounting software of choice.

Finally, Skytale provides a business analytics platform for SMEs to visualize their crypto activities — also accessible via API for customers to build custom data analytics tools.

#Shipping auth 10X faster

Ever since first hearing about Magic from a friend, Enrico told me:

“I fell in love with Magic links immediately”.

With a tight goal to launch their MVP in Q2 of 2021, Skytale was looking for a simple auth solution and realized that Magic was exactly what they were looking for, and then some: an auth solution, but also a backend, with integrations with modern blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, Binance and Celo.

“In a matter of days, we were able to authenticate users without writing almost any lines of code, offering enterprise-grade security.”

Since implementing auth with Magic, Enrico tells me they’ve seen a 25% increase in successful signups and user activation.

Here’s what the login flow looks like.

“This is a specific tangible example of a great partnership in which we could be focused on our core features, while very important features could be delegated to our partner.”

Skytale’s vision is to create a world of open finance where there will be no difference between transacting with fiat or crypto assets, both for corporations and individuals.

And thanks to Magic, that vision is approaching very quickly.