These investors include Moore Strategic Ventures (Louis Bacon), Kyle Bass, Access Industries, Rovida Advisors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV (aka Google Ventures), Lakestar, Eldridge, and more.
When we set out to raise our Series A in late 2014, there were only a handful of venture-backed crypto companies. A bitcoin was worth hundreds of dollars and we were pleased to power just over 2 million wallets in the wild.
Six years later, we’ve come a long way. Bitcoin just crossed the monumental price target of $50k. Over 65M Wallets have been created in 200+ countries. And 28% of all Bitcoin transactions since 2012 have occurred via Blockchain.com, representing billions in transaction volume.
What excites me most about this moment is the immense optimism about cryptocurrency from serious, institutional investors. In fact, the current bull run is dominated by stories of Fortune 500 companies, investment funds, and institutions driving net inflows into crypto. The fact that the best macro investors in the world participated in our latest fundraise is further proof that institutions are taking a serious look at their crypto strategy.
Our Institutional Markets business is growing exponentially, and while the Wallet remains the core of our business, our Institutional business is now significant enough to cover the entire operating cost of the business globally while also delivering additional operating profits.
Why now?
In the midst of a global pandemic, we’re experiencing an unprecedented level of distrust in traditional financial institutions. An acceleration of commerce online. A fundamental shift for communication, commerce, and investing that will leave the world forever changed.
More than ever before, crypto begins to seem like the real Robin Hood of finance. A decentralized network that creates and stores value for anyone with a mobile device and an internet connection. Companies are adding bitcoin to their balance sheets, central banks are taking notice of the innovations in DeFi, and we’re seeing all time high after all time high.
Fundraising as news is a bit strange to me. To be clear, I recognize all of the hard work the team has put in to accelerate the growth of Blockchain.com and crypto writ large — but what I’m most excited about hasn’t happened yet. Our mission is to empower anyone anywhere to control their money and we’re just getting started.
We’re thankful to the millions of Blockchain.com users who have grown with us over the years. Since our humble beginnings as blockchain.info, we’ve always been customer-first. Throughout each of the crypto cycles, our customer numbers have continued to increase, our product lines have expanded, and the industry has grown up in a big way.
Paradigm shifts like crypto can feel to the world as though they happened overnight — but for those of us working day in and day out to build technology and innovation in crypto, this has been a long time coming. I couldn’t be more optimistic about the future, but there’s so much more to do. It’s time to bring billions of people into crypto and millions of institutions around the world. It’s time to build a financial system for the internet.
It’s time to do the work.
