When the cryptocurrency evangelist Anthony Pompliano wanted cash to buy more bitcoin, he turned to a centuries old financial practice that has suddenly found a new audience in Silicon Valley.
In a few hours, Pompliano sold the rights to some of the future subscription revenues from his email newsletter, The Pomp Letter. The middleman was a two-year-old company called Pipe that connects businesses with investors offering to purchase their future revenues at discounted prices.
“This was me. I sold my recurring revenue to get cash upfront,” Pompliano wrote on Twitter, after Pipe’s chief executive revealed anonymised details about the transaction. “Then I bought more Bitcoin.”
Pompliano’s transaction was an extreme example of how the familiar practice of invoice factoring, more commonly used by manufacturers, is now being applied to tech start-ups who want fast cash without the expense of raising venture capital.
“I think we’ve unlocked the largest untapped asset class in the world,” said Harry Hurst, the chief executive of Pipe, who claimed that his company plans eventually to securitise the revenue streams on offer. Investors can already buy and sell contracts in secondary trades on the platform, he said.