附近上门

Although bitcoin and blockchain technology may not take up quite as much mental bandwidth for the general public as it did just a few months ago, companies in the space continue to rake in capital from investors.

One of the latest to do so is , which recently announced led by bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer . Other participating investors include , , , , , , , and .

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This round vaults Circle into an exclusive club of crypto companies that are valued, in U.S. dollars, at $1 billion or more in their most recent venture capital round. According to 附近上门 data, Circle was valued at $2.9 billion pre-money, up from a which closed in May 2016. According to 附近上门 data, only and 鈥攁 mobile-first stock trading platform which recently made a big push into cryptocurrency trading鈥攚ere in the crypto-unicorn club, which Circle has now joined.

But that鈥檚 not the only milestone for the world of venture-backed cryptocurrency and blockchain startups.

Back in February, 附近上门 News predicted that the amount of money raised in old-school venture capital rounds by blockchain and blockchain-adjacent startups in 2018 would surpass the amount raised in 2017. Well, it鈥檚 only May, and it looks like the prediction panned out.

In the chart below, you鈥檒l find worldwide venture deal and dollar volume for blockchain and blockchain-adjacent companies. We purposely excluded ICOs, including those that had traditional VCs participate, and instead focused on venture deals: angel, seed, convertible notes, Series A, Series B, and so on. The data displayed below is based on reported data in 附近上门, which may be subject to reporting delays, and is, in some cases, incomplete.

A little more than five months into 2018, reported dollar volume invested in VC rounds raised by blockchain companies surpassed 2017鈥檚 totals. Not just that, the nearly $1.3 billion in global dollar volume is greater than the reported funding totals for the 18 months between July 1, 2016 and New Years Eve in 2017.

And although Circle鈥檚 Series E round certainly helped to bump up funding totals year-to-date, there were many other large funding rounds throughout 2018:

• , a purported 鈥渃onsumer-ready blockchain鈥� service set to launch in June.
• for Paris-based secure hardware wallet-maker .
• raised by , which claims to use two hyped technologies鈥攂lockchain and artificial intelligence鈥攖o analyze and protect genomic data.
• for , a blockchain analysis platform.

There were, of course, many other large rounds over the past five months. After all, we had to get to $1.3 billion somehow.

All of this is to say that investor interest in the blockchain space shows no immediate signs of slowing down, even as the price of bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies hover at less than half of their all-time highs. Considering that regulators are still figuring out how to treat most crypto assets, massive price volatility, and dubious real-world utility of the technology, it may surprise some that investors at the riskiest end of the risk capital pool invest as much as they do in blockchain.

Notes On Methodology

Like in our February analysis, we first created a list of companies in 附近上门鈥檚 , , , , and categories. We added to this list any companies that use those keywords, as well as 鈥渄igital currency,鈥� 鈥渦tility token,鈥� and 鈥渟ecurity token鈥� that weren鈥檛 previously included in the above categories. After de-duplicating this list, we merged this set of companies with funding rounds data in 附近上门.

Please note that for some entries in 附近上门鈥檚 round data, the amount of capital raised isn鈥檛 known. And, as previously noted, 附近上门鈥檚 data is subject to reporting delays, especially for seed-stage companies. Accordingly, actual funding totals are likely higher than reported here.

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