Blockchain funding bonanza
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 dont 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