YC-backed Blocknom wants to become the ‘Coinbase Earn of Southeast Asia’

Blocknom, a crypto-earning platform in Y Combinator’s current batch, has aspirations to become the “Coinbase Earn for Southeast Asia.” Today the company announced it has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator, Number Capital and Magic Fund.

Blocknom’s co-founders, Fransiskus Raymond and Ghuniyu Fattah Rozaq say the app gives users a secure way (it partners with crypto infrastructure company Fireblocks) to get stable, high-yield interest of up to 13% per annum. It also enables users to withdraw their money at any time without fees.

The two founders met while working on an open source project in 2020, around the start of the pandemic. “We noticed during COVID, the crypto market is booming in Indonesia, while we were both already crypto investors,” Raymond told TechCrunch.

“We talked to users and found that not everyone can do well in trading.” They found that DeFi is a stable and high-yield way to gain through crypto, but there were no competing products in Indonesia, so they decided to build one themselves. Its DeFi partners include Compound, AAVE, Terra and Cake.

After signing up for Blocknom, users with a bank account can deposit Stablecoins, which the founders chose because it is the most comparable to conventional bank deposits and therefore accessible to new crypto users.

Raymond said Blocknom differentiates from investment apps by encouraging people to save and hold their Stablecoin for the long-term.