Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance

What Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance does

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) is a non-profit academic research centre established in 2015 within Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. Its mission is to create and transfer knowledge addressing emergent gaps in the financial sector that supports evidence-based decision-making. The centre is dedicated to the study of technology-enabled and innovative instruments, channels, and systems emerging outside of traditional finance, and operates the Cambridge Alternative Finance Collaboration Network (CAFCN), which is regionally embedded in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region.

CCAF's core product surface is a portfolio of eight interactive digital tools: the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) and the broader Cambridge Blockchain Network Sustainability Index (CBNSI) for tracking Bitcoin and Ethereum network electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions using a hybrid top-down methodology; the Cambridge Digital Money Dashboard (CDMD) for digital money market data; the DeFi Navigator for decentralized finance ecosystem mapping and Total Value Locked tracking; the Global Regulatory Innovation Dashboard (GRID) for cross-jurisdictional regulatory landscape visualisation; the Open Banking Readiness Checker (OBRC) for regulatory decision support; the Cambridge Fintech Ecosystem Atlas tracking 4,586 fintech entities since 2010; and the Cambridge Alternative Finance Benchmarks (CAFB) for global digital lending and digital capital raising time-series data. The centre also delivers the Cambridge Fintech and Regulatory Innovation (CFTRI) online education programme, which has trained over 1,200 regulators and central bankers from more than 300 institutions across 140 countries.

The business model is grant-funded rather than commercial. All digital tools, research reports, and publications are provided free of charge as public goods under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Funding flows from institutional supporters including UK AID (via the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office), Invesco, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (supporting OBRC), and the Asian Development Bank Institute (supporting CAFB), supplemented by the multi-collaborator Cambridge Digital Assets Programme (CDAP), which brings together 14 institutional partners including BIS, World Bank, IMF, Goldman Sachs, Mastercard, Visa, Fidelity, and EY. The centre serves two primary customer segments: policymakers and regulators (120+ regulatory authorities and central banks have collaborated on research) and fintech market participants seeking market intelligence.

Name

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance

Legal name

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance

Website

https://ccaf.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2015

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

101–250 employees

Short description

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance is a non-profit research centre at Cambridge Judge Business School that builds free, publicly accessible digital tools and benchmarks tracking global fintech markets, blockchain sustainability, digital money, and alternative finance for policymakers, regulators, and market participants.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Cambridge

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Research Grants and Institutional Funding: CCAF operates as a not-for-profit research institute at the University of Cambridge. The centre receives funding from institutional collaborators and supporters including UK AID, Invesco, and other organisations. The work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) is a research centre at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge that creates and transfers knowledge addressing emergent gaps in the financial sector. Its core deliverable is a portfolio of interactive digital tools and dashboards that provide market data and visualizations on digital money, blockchain energy consumption, decentralized finance, open banking, fintech ecosystems, and alternative finance benchmarks. All tools are released free of charge under Creative Commons licensing for use by policymakers, regulators, researchers, and industry participants.

Product overview

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance offers a suite of interactive digital tools providing timely Fintech market data for market participants, policymakers and regulators. The portfolio includes the Cambridge Digital Money Dashboard for digital money data, the Cambridge Blockchain Network Sustainability Index (CBNSI) encompassing the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) for tracking Bitcoin electricity consumption and GHG emissions, the DeFi Navigator for decentralised finance ecosystem mapping, the Global Regulatory Innovation Dashboard (GRID) for regulatory landscape visualisation, the Open Banking Readiness Checker (OBRC) for assessing open banking initiatives, the Cambridge Fintech Ecosystem Atlas for tracking fintech entities across segments and geographies, and the Cambridge Alternative Finance Benchmarks for digital lending and capital raising data. Together, these tools support evidence-based decision-making in the financial sector through data visualisation, analysis, and capacity building.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Cambridge Digital Money Dashboard (CDMD) Interactive digital dashboard providing visualizations of fintech market data on digital money for researchers, policymakers, and industry participants.
• Cambridge Blockchain Network Sustainability Index (CBNSI) Index tracking the sustainability profile of blockchain networks for ESG analysts, policymakers, and researchers.
• Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) Real-time index estimating the total electricity consumption of the Bitcoin network, used by researchers, policymakers, and journalists.
• Bitcoin Mining Map Geographic visualization of Bitcoin mining activity across jurisdictions for researchers, regulators, and industry analysts.
• Bitcoin GHG Emissions Index Index estimating the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the Bitcoin network for ESG and policy audiences.
• DeFi Navigator Interactive navigator for decentralized finance protocols and market data for researchers, regulators, and DeFi industry participants.
• Global Regulatory Innovation Dashboard (GRID) Dashboard cataloguing fintech regulatory innovation initiatives such as sandboxes and accelerators across jurisdictions for policymakers and regulators.
• Open Banking Readiness Checker (OBRC) Tool for assessing open banking readiness across jurisdictions for policymakers, regulators, and financial institutions.
• Cambridge Fintech Ecosystem Atlas Atlas mapping global fintech ecosystems and their characteristics for ecosystem developers, policymakers, and investors.
• Cambridge Alternative Finance Benchmarks Benchmarking datasets for alternative finance transaction volumes across regions for researchers, policymakers, and industry analysts.
• Cambridge Fintech and Regulatory Innovation (CFTRI) Programme Research programme focused on fintech and regulatory innovation, producing studies and tools for policymakers and regulators.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over 1,200 regulators and central bankers trained from 300+ institutions in 140 countries
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature8 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Cambridge Digital Assets Programme (CDAP) Institutional CollaboratorscoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMulti-year research initiative with 14 institutional collaborators: Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, British International Investment (BII), Dubai International Finance Centre (DIFC), EY, Fidelity, UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Goldman Sachs, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), Invesco, Mastercard, MSCI, Visa, and World Bank.
• BTC.comcoreTechnology or IntegrationBitcoin mining pool providing geolocational mining facility data for the CBECI mining map. BTC.com is part of the sample capturing approximately 32-38% of total Bitcoin hashrate.
• PoolincoreTechnology or IntegrationBitcoin mining pool providing geolocational mining facility data for the CBECI mining map tracking geographic distribution of Bitcoin mining.
• ViaBTCcoreTechnology or IntegrationBitcoin mining pool contributing geolocational data to the CBECI mining map project for tracking Bitcoin network hashrate distribution.
• FoundrycoreTechnology or IntegrationBitcoin mining pool providing geolocational mining facility data contributing to the CBECI mining map dataset covering approximately 32-38% of Bitcoin hashrate.
• AntpoolcoreTechnology or IntegrationBitcoin mining pool contributing geolocational data to the CBECI mining map project tracking global Bitcoin mining distribution.
• Regulatory Authorities and Central BankscoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMore than 120 regulatory authorities and central banks worldwide collaborated with CCAF on regulatory research. The CFTRI programme trained over 1,200 regulators from 300+ institutions in 140 countries.
• Cambridge Alternative Finance Collaboration Network (CAFCN)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerKnowledge network with regionally embedded resources activated in Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Three layers: physical infrastructure, data infrastructure, and programmatic layers.

Scale indicators9 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Emerging players

• Galaxy Digital Research: Research arm of Galaxy Digital producing institutional crypto-asset research, market reports, and bitcoin mining analysis. Comparable to CCAF given overlap on Bitcoin mining, energy, and digital-asset market research, though commercially oriented to investors rather than regulators.

Broad incumbents

• Chainalysis: Commercial blockchain analytics firm providing transaction monitoring, compliance, and investigative data to governments and financial institutions. Comparable to CCAF's blockchain-data work but focused on commercial/government compliance use cases rather than open public research.
• OECD Finance and Digital Economy: OECD division publishing policy research on digital finance, cryptoasset regulation, and open banking across member states. Comparable to CCAF given overlap on regulatory-innovation tracking (GRID) and fintech policy research, though addressing a higher-income, OECD-focused membership.
• International Monetary Fund (IMF): Multilateral institution publishing working papers and policy notes on fintech, digital money, CBDCs, and cryptoasset regulation. Comparable to CCAF given shared audience (finance ministries and central banks) and overlap on digital money research, though broader in scope and policy-oriented.
• World Bank Group FinTech: World Bank's fintech and inclusive-finance research arm producing global reports on alternative finance, digital lending, and emerging-market fintech. Comparable to CCAF given overlapping thematic focus on alternative finance in developing regions and shared collaborator status in CDAP.
• BIS Innovation Hub: Innovation arm of the Bank for International Settlements exploring CBDCs, DeFi, and fintech through projects (e.g., mBridge, Pyhaeuss). Comparable to CCAF as a supranational research partner for central banks and a CDAP collaborator, though operating at a higher policy-making tier rather than producing open public data tools.

Direct peers

• Digiconomist: Independent publisher of crypto-asset sustainability indices, including the original Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index. Directly comparable to CCAF's CBECI as they publish similar daily Bitcoin electricity consumption and environmental metrics, making them the closest overlapping product.
• Glassnode: Blockchain analytics platform providing on-chain indicators, market intelligence, and DeFi metrics to institutional and retail users. Comparable to CCAF's CBNSI and DeFi Navigator given shared focus on transparent blockchain-network and DeFi-ecosystem data.
• Coin Metrics: Institutional-grade blockchain data and analytics provider supplying on-chain market and network data to crypto firms, asset managers, and researchers. Comparable to CCAF's blockchain sustainability and digital-asset data tools given overlapping data sources (Coin Metrics is a data partner for CBECI) and similar audiences.
• DeFi Llama: Open DeFi analytics platform tracking Total Value Locked, protocol fees, and TVL flows across blockchains. Closely comparable to CCAF's DeFi Navigator given overlapping coverage of DeFi ecosystem mapping, service providers, and value flows.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/CambridgeAltFin

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance