Despite the fact that bitcoin and the blockchain already does not excite the minds of the public as well as a few months ago, startups in this space continue to attract venture capital investment.

One of the latest of such companies has become a Circle. Recently, she reported on the investment round series E in the amount of $110 million, which was led by the developer of bitcoin miners Bitmain. Among other participants of the round — Tusk Ventures, Pantera Capital, IDG Capital Partners, General Catalyst, Accel Partners, Digital Currency Group, Blockchain Capital and Breyer Capital.

Thus, the Circle joined an exclusive club of cryptocurrency companies, which was estimated at more than $1 billion in the course of venture financing. According to the online edition Crunchbase, before the recent investment round Circle was estimated at $2.9 billion, and before the D round, which closed in may 2016, the figure was $420 million

Circle became the third “unicorn” (a startup billionaire), along with Coinbase and Robinhood — the world’s first mobile platform for stock trading, which has recently entered cryptoprotection.

However, this is not only a major milestone in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain startups supported by venture capital.

In February Crunchbase predicted that the amount of money collected in the framework of the traditional venture funding blockchain startups in 2018, will exceed indicators of 2017. Still only may, and the prediction has come true.

The chart below it is easy to notice the growing number and volume of venture capital deals involving blockchain-companies. These data excluded the ICO, including those involving traditional venture capitalists. Presented only pure venture capital deals: angel and initial investment, convertible loans, rounds of series A, B, etc. Data is prepared Crunchbase and may be incomplete.

Less than five months of 2018, as reports emerged that the amount of venture capital investment in blockchain startups exceeded the final amount of funding in 2017. In addition, nearly $1.3 billion in global investments for this year is more of the stated sum of funding over 18 months from 1 July 2016 until the end of 2017.

Although the round Circle series E helped to improve the funding levels annually in 2018 there were many other big plays:

• $118 million attracted Orbs “bloccano, ready for the consumer” — the project will be launched in June;
• $75 million raised in series B round manufacturer of secure hardware wallet Ledger;
• $32 million project has brought Shivom, which is aimed at sharing the blockchain and artificial intelligence for the analysis of genomic data and their protection;
• $16 million attracted in A series of A platform blockchain analysis Chainalysis.

Over the past five months, of course, there were also many other quite large rounds, which helped to reach $1.3 billion.

All of the above demonstrates that investor interest in the blockchain does not subside even when the price of bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies account for less than half the record highs. Regulators are scratching their heads over what the rules should be applied to cryptocurrencies, with their huge, volatilnostju and of dubious real utility, venture capitalists are not afraid to take risks.

Meanwhile, the journalists Wall Street Journal estimated that a similar amount was collected fraudulent ICO projects, deceived its investors.

On materials of TechCrunch

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