Easy Crypto explores collaborative partnership with researchers through colocation at NIP

Easy Crypto is a broker and retail service that enables people to buy and sell cryptocurrencies through a simple one-click process. Janine Grainger and her brother Alan founded Easy Crypto in New Zealand in 2017 and the company expanded quickly into markets worldwide. Janine worked in banking at the time but was personally investing in cryptocurrencies before their popularity surged in 2017. She saw there was no elegant or intuitive way for enthusiasts to enter the cryptocurrency market, so she and her brother Alan developed Easy Crypto to address this issue. The company’s goal is to provide users with a simple "one-click" solution they can use to buy into the crypto ecosystem.

But Janine had a problem common to start-ups; her company needed a physical base. She and her initially small team were working out of cafes, libraries, and other public spaces. This made it difficult to hold meetings and work collaboratively. Janine was also looking for more than just office space, cryptocurrency is complicated and collaborative, and she wanted to access knowledge, fellow entrepreneurs, and create a brain trust that could help put Easy Crypto on the map. That’s where the Newmarket Innovation Precinct came in. 

The Newmarket Innovation Precinct (NIP) allows companies to bring their teams together in a research-intensive environment and develop collaborative relationships with academics.

Janine discovered NIP through the community network, Gerald Kwazu, an Easy Crypto employee was a current PhD student at Auckland University. Claire Bennett, Industry Engagement Programme Manager, first enabled the company to secure hot desk space as members of NIP, the university’s Newmarket Campus. This allowed the company to take advantage of the office-based services available to entrepreneurs and companies and settle into the university environment. With their Auckland team growing from 6 to over 20 in less than 12months, the flexibility of the NIP membership to move to a full office colocation suited the company well. 

With Claire’s support navigating the University’s researcher community, Easy Crypto was introduced to a variety of experts within Engineering and Computer Science to discuss common research themes of interest. Janine outlined some of the challenges in this exciting new sector and pitched ideas for how these problems might be solved in collaboration with University’s research teams.

Easy Crypto is now in discussion with The University of Auckland's Dr Partha Roop and Dr Reza Sharhamiri regarding research opportunities to implement machine learning in fraud detection. Easy Crypto aims to be at the cutting edge of tools and technologies used to actively monitor and predictively combat fraud. Working with a university research team would allow Easy Crypto to tap into resources it wouldn’t otherwise have, like access to postgraduate students and researcher networks.

Moving forward, Easy Crypto is also interested in supporting University of Auckland students by coming up with projects that they can work on in the computer science, software engineering, and hardware engineering fields.