Major firms across the financial services landscape are making their first investments into bitcoin and blockchain startups. CB Insights collected all relevant data to build one chart illustrating the plethora of investment activity in the space.
The herd of new strategic investors is playing an increasingly important role in the health of the financing market for startups in the space. While deal activity dropped for the second consecutive quarter in Q3’15 to $87M, all five of the largest financing deals to blockchain and bitcoin startups in 2015 year-to-date included a corporate strategic investor. As TransAmerica Ventures CEO Georg Schwegler said recently, “The encouraging part is that a lot of finance companies — banks and insurance — are becoming aware of the advantages of the technology finally.”