Sock – the first self-custodial investment app to offer a safer way to build wealth through cryptocurrency through unbiased financial services – recently announced its official launch today along with a $2.8 million seed funding round led by Haven Ventures, with participation from Designer Fund, Expansion, Spacecadet Ventures, Sunflower Fund and Olive Capital, as well as notable angels, including Tim Chen (CEO of NerdWallet), Mike and Albert Lee (founders of MyFitnessPal,) Dalpat Prajapati (Co-founder of Copperx and former Head of UX at Polygon) and others.
Launched by tech veterans Rick Johanson, Bryan Levine, and Chris Titterton in 2022, Sock believes anyone should be free to grow wealth safely and securely. And to turn this vision into a reality, the app is ushering in a new paradigm for self-custodial personal finance, starting with investing. Unlike centralized exchanges, Sock is entirely “self-custodial,” meaning users have complete control over their funds, but Sock’s founders aim even higher.
The crypto-investment community has seen a crucial behavior shift fueled by growing consumer dissatisfaction with the current financial system. In fact, a majority of Americans believe that the U.S. financial system is inequitable and biased towards powerful interests. And the majority of them agree that the system requires substantial reform or even a complete overhaul, with a consensus that cryptocurrency can play a vital role in addressing these issues.
Sock has been providing the solution for consumers who have lost trust in centralized or institutional products and want more access and control. And the app offers casual investors a safer way to grow wealth through crypto by providing services that were once limited to only centralized exchanges and other custodial fintech products. With features designed to shield customers from speculation and volatility, Sock provides a self-custodial experience that’s safe, and easy to use, allowing investors to confidently navigate the crypto landscape.
Sock makes it easier for users to protect investments through stop-loss and limit orders automatically and provides industry-leading insights to empower users to invest wisely. Sock does not support trading tokens that fail to meet its stringent criteria, such as meme coins or unrealistic APYs. Alternatively, it empowers users to “do the research” by using Sock Score – which allows investors to easily understand a token’s fundamentals. All tokens on Sock come with an A-F risk grade, giving Sock’s customers peace of mind about their investments based on their risk tolerance and financial goals.
Sock uses Account Abstraction to create a simplified user experience that feels akin to the personal finance products many consumers are accustomed to. And with this, Sock customers can transact without paying network fees (gas), effortlessly safeguard investments by setting upper or lower thresholds for token sales to mitigate potential losses and enable account recovery (even if they lose their keys) so that users never lose access to their funds.
The founding team’s decades of combined experience building large-scale consumer products at Gemini, Google, NerdWallet, MyFitnessPal, Zendesk, and more has empowered the creation of Sock’s platform that offers users with reliability and accessibility for managing their crypto portfolio, regardless of prior experience. Before Sock, crypto users would be exposed to the risks that come with custodial solutions or would be forced to use self-custodial solutions that are incredibly difficult to use and error-prone. And the team is also working in tandem with a coalition of organizations that prioritize crypto and financial literacy marketed towards a casual audience, including Bronx Crypto. The collaboration helped Sock understand the problems real investors face and develop its innovative solutions.
Sock’s vision is to extend the concept of self-custody beyond just investing and storing crypto, creating a healthy financial system where everyone has access to unbiased and fair personal financial services. And Sock is now available for download on iOS and Android.
KEY QUOTES:
“Investing in crypto can be overwhelming, especially when it comes to knowing where to start, safety concerns and difficult user experiences. The technology is confusing, often causing new or casual investors to make costly mistakes. Sock is changing this by providing a simple and approachable app that helps users invest with confidence. Our ambition is to extend Sock’s offerings to a global audience and provide non-custodial versions of other financial products, such as remittance, savings, and more.”
– Rick Johanson, CEO and Co-founder of Sock
“Every decade or so, the personal finance industry faces a crisis – as we just witnessed in 2022-2023 – which ultimately causes consumers to lose trust in fintech products. This makes a self-custodial, customer-centric app like Sock more important than ever. We believe the self-custodial, personal finance market has massive potential for growth as apps like Sock make self-custody more accessible and easier to use.”
– Bryan Levine, Co-Founder and Head of Product at Sock
“Blockchain and AI are rapidly converging to redefine the global financial ecosystem. Interestingly, this transformative wave often starts from the top, similar to how cloud technologies once birthed mobile banking, and legislative shifts like Dodd-Frank enabled fresh fintech paradigms. We foresee a future where self-custody is as integral as mobile banking is now. At Haven, our conviction is that, mirroring past trends, platforms like Sock, designed for everyday Americans, will stand at the forefront of this evolution.”
– Joseph Guzel, Managing Partner at Haven Ventures
“Sock is transforming the unintuitive and scary parts of crypto investing into a more usable and trustworthy experience for mainstream investors while giving them ultimate control of their assets.”
– Enrique Allen, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Designer Fund
