The State of Investment into Security Token Infrastructure — Q3 2019
STO activity is starting to heat up. Exchanges are looking to raise landmark amounts and infrastructure companies continue to raise capital.
The fourth quarter is upon us which means we have a new set of highlights from Q3 investments into Security Token infrastructure companies. In our previous report, we predicted another slow quarter of investment activity as companies were busy deploying the $500,000,000+ that has already been invested in infrastructure. Our prediction was accurate as there was little activity with one notable raise from an industry leader, Securitize, picking up an 8 digit raise from institutions that included Santander and MUFG.
The punchline: Almost $20,000,000 was deployed into infrastructure for security tokens in Q3–2019. That brings the total investment to date to around $665,000,000 with this quarter being the slowest on record.
We anticipate Q4 to pick up more as we predict an increase in activity in the market thanks to new listings and exchanges going live. We believe this will spark renewed interest and financing activity even greater than the past 6 months. Security tokens still remain an unproven technology and until major issuers and exchanges validate the use case, there will continue to be little investing activity in the infrastructure.
As always, we will continue to update this list as we find new information. Our last update was on February 10th, 2020.
Read the Q2-2019 Market Report Here
Read the Q1-2019 Market Report Here
Issuance Platforms
Securitize, San Francisco — $14,000,000 (Previous financing of $12,000,000)
Smart Valor, Zug — $3,300,000 (Previous financing of $1,500,000)
TokenMarket, Gibraltar— £240,000
Fundament Group, Berlin — Undisclosed investment from Bauwens Group
Exchanges
iSTOX, Singapore — Undisclosed
Other Infrastructure Companies
No other infrastructure companies that raised money this quarter have been identified at this time.
ICO, Crowdfunding or FinTech Companies Also Offering STO Services**
Anchorage, San Francisco — $40,000,000
ConsenSys, Brooklyn — $10,000,000 by SK Group
StartEngine, Los Angeles — $1,700,000 (previous financing of $15,400,000)
Acquisitions
BlockTrade, Liechtenstein — Undisclosed sale to Cryptix
InteliClear, New York — Undisclosed sale to Prometheum
Currently fundraising category (notable mentions):
INX, Gibraltar — Announced intentions to do up to $130,000,000 IPO in US (Previous financing of $4,900,000)
Smartlands, London — Announced intentions to STO
We will continue to update this list with missing information about Q3. Stay tuned and subscribe to see the Q4 report in January!
*Also does issuance.
**Not applied towards the total investment into Security Token Infrastructure due to some of the capital being invested towards non-security token infrastructure.
