Although Bitcoin is no longer as crazy as it was at the end of last year, traditional VCs are still paying attention to companies in this field, and they continue to invest money.
(WeChat: o-daily) learned that the latest investment transaction that has attracted peoples attention is Circle, an American blockchain payment start-up company. They have announced that they have obtained US$110 million in Series E financing led by digital currency mining giant Bitmain. , other participating investors are well-known venture capital firms in the industry, including Tusk Ventures, Pantera Capital, IDG Capital Partners, General Catalyst, Accel Partners, Digital Currency Group, Breyer Capital and Blockchain Capital.
According to relevant valuation data, Circle’s company valuation before this round of financing was US$2.9 billion, which was much higher than the company’s US$420 million valuation in May 2016 during its D round of financing. It is worth mentioning that todays Circle has successfully joined the Blockchain Industry Unicorn Club. Previously, only cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and mobile trading platform Robinhood appeared to have received the honor.
However, for the entire cryptocurrency and blockchain startup industry, a $110 million investment and unicorn valuation does not seem like a milestone at all in the eyes of traditional VCs.
In fact, many industry insiders predicted that the scale of traditional venture capital investment in blockchain startups in 2018 would exceed that in 2017.However, what many people did not expect is that happiness comes too suddenly - in the past five months this year, the investment of traditional venture capital in the blockchain and blockchain peripheral industries has exceeded the total investment in 2017. Year.
In the chart below, you will find the blockchain from the first half of 2012 to the first half of 2018 (one month less), and the trend of the financing scale of traditional venture capital for start-ups around the blockchain. It’s important to note that we’re specifically excluding Initial Coin Offering (ICO) rounds, including those with traditional VC participation, and instead focus on real VC funding: angel rounds, seed rounds, series A and B, etc. .
After entering 2018, in just five months, the scale of venture capital raised by blockchain companies has exceeded the total sum of 2017, which is about 1.3 billion US dollars - higher than that from July 1, 2016 to the end of 2017 the total amount of financing.
In addition to Circle’s enviable $110 million Series E round of financing, other blockchain startups that received larger funding this year include:
1. Blockchain version of Alibaba Cloud Orbs received US$118 million in financing and is expected to go online in June this year;
2. Ledger, a French secure hardware cryptocurrency wallet manufacturer, completed a $75 million Series B round of financing;
3. The Shivom project, which combines blockchain and artificial intelligence to analyze and protect genetic data, raised $32 million in financing;
4. Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis platform, completed its Series A financing of US$16 million, led by Benchmark.
All of which is to say that investor interest in the blockchain industry shows no signs of waning even as the prices of bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies fall to half of their all-time highs.Considering that regulators are still figuring out how to deal with crypto assets, as well as the huge price volatility and practical application of blockchain technology, it is surprising that traditional VCs are still determined to make big bets in the blockchain industry. .
It is worth noting that many blockchain startups have not disclosed their specific financing amount. That is to say,The actual total funding raised in the blockchain industry in the first five months of this year is likely to be higher than $1.3 billion.
