The Difference Between a Crypto Project, Company, and Platform

The crypto space has been very vibrant, offering impressive year-on-year growth stats. The total market cap hovers at around $2.3 trillion, close to double its valuation in early February this year.

As a reflection of this vibrancy, new crypto projects, companies, and platforms keep being launched regularly. Most of the new entrants always introduce a new feature to the fray to gain a competitive advantage over their predecessors.

But how does one differentiate a crypto project, a crypto company, and a crypto platform? The article shall delve deep into the specificities regarding each category.

Key Definitions

To better understand just how different crypto projects, companies, and platforms are from each other, it is important to define each.

Crypto Project

A crypto project refers to any investment undertaking that is heavily involved in the cryptocurrency space. Such a project may cover many areas or be very specific to a certain aspect of cryptocurrencies. It may also be wholly tied to cryptocurrencies or offer cross-sector services between cryptos and other non-crypto spaces.

Crypto Company

By definition, a crypto company is any registered business entity with its activities deeply involved in cryptocurrencies. The firm’s activities may similarly cover most arrays of the blockchain space or be limited to a specific line of cryptos. It may also have its activities wholly involved in cryptocurrencies or could be immersed in both cryptos and other non-crypto areas.

Crypto Platform

On the other hand, a crypto platform refers to the specific infrastructure or space that provides certain defined services for the cryptocurrency world. It may be a crypto project or a crypto company.

The term is most commonly used as synonymous with crypto exchange platforms. However, it may refer to other service providers, such as an entire blockchain ecosystem that supports a certain cryptocurrency.

The Differences

There are several key differences with regards to the aforementioned three. The differences can be further stratified into three major subsections for better clarity.

The fundamentals behind them are among the 4 key skills that are especially crucial for professions like crypto marketing. These fundamentals include creating them, how they operate, and the purpose of their creation.

1. Mode of Creation

The first difference arises from the way each of the three is created and established. It is the defining factor of each.

A crypto project is created by simply starting investments in a certain crypto idea. Its creation method involves the coming together of developers and wiring funds towards the implementation of an idea.

A crypto company, on the other hand, is a legal entity involved in cryptocurrencies. Its establishment involves the registering of the entity first. After that, the entity is usually the tool used to start crypto projects.

On the other hand, crypto platforms involve the coming together of both funds and developers to create a certain crypto service provider. The provider may be a company or a project.

2. Operation Mechanism

A crypto project’s mode of operation is usually extensive. For example, a hard fork in a blockchain may be specifically designed to make crypto operations more secure or smoother. It may similarly be a whole new blockchain hence has all key operations and supporting functions of cryptos. The key requirement is that it has to be involved in cryptos and blockchain.

A crypto company, in turn, has its operations defined by its registration statutes. It may be a holding company to a blockchain project or platform, an example being Ripple. Inc company, which is the owner of the Ripple blockchain. It may similarly be a service provider in itself.

As for a crypto platform, this is the actual service provider that facilitates certain crypto-related activities. For example, an exchange platform enables the purchase of cryptos, while a DeFi blockchain platform enables the building of apps on a blockchain.

3. Purpose of Creation 

Another key defining factor for the differences in the three is the purpose of creation. Each of the three has a different reason behind its creation.

A crypto project is created for several crypto-related purposes. They usually have a specific aim, such as solving a certain issue, onboarding an innovation, or make operations easier.

Crypto companies are created for one key purpose, to conduct activities in the crypto space. They may be for-profit or non-profit. They may also be the actual conductor of activities or beholding firms to the activity-running venture.

The last of the three is the crypto platform. It is created with the sole purpose of providing services to the cryptocurrency world. The specific service may be different concerning the nature of the platform itself. For instance, exchange platforms provide crypto exchange services.

The Gray Areas

Even though specifics regarding how they are created, why they are created, and how they operate are distinct, it is still straightforward to confuse them. That’s because there is a lot of overlap amongst their functionalities that may create gray areas regarding their distinctiveness. These gray areas are as below;

• All crypto platforms were crypto projects, but not all crypto projects are crypto platforms. However, since projects are specific investments of crypto-related ideas to bring them to reality, they include all crypto platforms.
• Crypto companies are the investment wheels behind crypto projects and platforms. But they may also be crypto projects if they are the investments and not just holder companies or crypto platforms if they provide the services themselves.
• A crypto project could still be a crypto company as well as a crypto platform. A good example of this is the crypto exchange platforms that start as projects to provide a platform for trading in cryptocurrencies.

Take Away

Crypto projects, crypto companies, and crypto platforms have one key similarity; they are all involved in the cryptocurrency world. Nonetheless, their creation method, reasons behind their creation, and mode of operation offer defining differences. Their classification otherwise has huge overlaps and isn’t black and white.

A crypto project may still be a crypto company and/or a crypto platform, or it may only be a crypto project. The differences between them in such a scenario are therefore largely defined for legal or academic purposes. Several times, they may be referring to the same thing. Well, whether you have a crypto project, company, or platform, the team here at crypto virally can offer you the best marketing services for your project to reach mainstream adoption.