Blockchain funding bonanza

Coins made of bit (Source: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images)

Bitcoin just keeps Bitcoin-ing.

With President Biden signing the $1.9T COVID relief bill into law, expectations for rising inflation (and the $1.4k stimulus checks as a new source of demand) sent BTC over the $60k milestone.

The cryptocurrency is now up ~12x in the last 12 months.

Crypto companies are booming

The biggest fish, Coinbase, is headed for a $100B+ public debut, while last week saw 2 big funding rounds in the space.

First up: BlockFi, which raised $350m at a $3B valuation, per TechCrunch. Billed as a financial services startup for crypto, BlockFi offers products for:

• Retail investors: Users can buy and sell crypto on an app. But, crucially, BlockFi also offers interest on crypto savings (6%+) and lends money against crypto holdings so people looking for liquidity don’t have to sell their assets (it has lent $10B+ so far).
• Institutional clients: BlockFi provides trade execution services to help organizations secure large blocks of crypto.

Today, the startup has 265k+ retail and 200+ institutional clients, while monthly revenue has hit $50m (vs. $1.5m a year ago).

Next up is FalconX…

… another crypto trading platform that aims at institutions, and which raised $50m. As Bitcoin surged over the past year, the platform saw its revenue increase 46x.

These funding moves come as crypto is becoming increasingly mainstream. Established players such as PayPal, Visa, and JPMorgan all rolled out crypto-related services in 2020.

Whether or not Bitcoin keeps Bitcoin-ing, crypto looks like it’s here to stay.