Techemy Advisory Capital Chronicles: May 2019
Welcome to Techemy Advisory Capital Chronicles where we analyse and list capital raises, mergers and acquisitions (M&As), ICOs, IEOs and STOs that occurred in the blockchain space over the past month.
According to our research, in May approximately thirty companies raised traditional capital and seventeen of the thirty companies disclosed financial details of their raise. These seventeen companies raised just over $67.2M, with Innoplexus and QED-It both raising $10M each. There is a significant difference between capital raising in April and May, as May saw seventeen fewer investments than April, which had forty-seven investments raising over $368M. Of the portion of companies that disclosed financial details of their deals, year to date May had the least amount of traditional capital raised.
Only a few of the notable blockchain and cryptocurrency investors made traditional equity investments in May. The FinLab EOS VC Fund made two investments, while Ripples Xpring, Outlier Ventures and GSR Capital each made one investment. In May we did see more investments from institutions and well-known firms such as Barclays, Samsung NEXT, Saudi Aramco, Ant Financial and Draper Associates. Adding to this, on May 15th Dunamu, the parent company of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, announced that it has made over $46M in 26 blockchain companies since establishing its investment subsidiary in March 2018.
A long rumoured deal was also finally disclosed in May; GSR Capital who had previously agreed to purchase $30M of tZERO security tokens ended up investing just $5M for equity. Of the seventeen deals that disclosed financial details only two raised over $6M while the average amount raised of the remainder of the deals was $3.95M, indicating once again that a large proportion of the disclosed deals were seed rounds. 50% of all the companies that raised traditional equity in May are based in USA, three companies that raised are based in Israel, and the remaining twelve companies are based in various other countries.
There were thirteen token sales in May and seven of them were IEOs on reputable exchanges. The most notable token sale by far was the Bitfinex private sale for their exchange token UNUS SED LEO. Bitfinex raised $1B USDT in ten days. Investors included large private companies who made investments of over $100M each and many smaller investors who made investments over $1M each. As a result of the Bitfinex token sale, the month of May recorded the most money raised via token sales year to date. Discounting the Bitfinex token sale the eleven other companies raised $47.4M. bloXroute raised $10M via a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens. Eleven investors participated in this sale including Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Fenbushi Capital. Half of the token sales were conducted by companies based in the USA, while the remainder were companies based in China, Switzerland and Sweden.
The seven IEOs raised $18.4M and were held on Binance, Bittrex, Huobi, KuCoin and OKEx. The largest IEO in May was Harmony’s, which raised $5M on the Binance Launchpad, while the average amount raised for IEOs in May was $3M. Another exchange that will begin hosting IEOs is Bitfinex, who have partnered with Ethfinex to launch their own IEO platform Tokinex. The first sale on Tokinex will be the Ampleforth IEO on the 13th of June.
The graph above displays the distribution of the disclosed capital raised over various industries. This graph has excluded the Bitfinex token sale as it is an outlier and skews the rest of the data. After discounting Bitifinex it can be clearly seen that there wasn’t a lot of investment in the Trading and Investment sector in May, but if the Bitfinex raise is taken into account it is still the leading sector in regards to investment raised. Over 77% of the raises in the Blockchain sector happened via token sales. Only two of the thirty equity raises were in the Blockchain sector, while more than half of all the token sales were in the Blockchain sector, which raised a total of $43.1M. ‘Other’ comprising of companies from various sectors raised $33.5M, the sector with the second most capital raised in May after. There were multiple investments in the Gaming and Identity sectors, with single investments in other sectors such as Education, Staking and Mining among others.
In May we saw one of the largest successful security token offerings on the year. Proxicoin, a security token that provides token holders with fractionalised ownership in film, television and other IP-based content, raised $100M from The Central Wealth Investment Fund of Hong Kong and Step Ventures. M&A activity was also the lowest it has been compared to Q1 2019, only 3 companies were acquired and no big names were involved. Two of the acquired companies from the trading and investments sector while one was in the Financial Services sector.
Thanks for reading, we hope that you’ll find Capital Chronicles valuable. If we have missed a deal that you know of, let us know. You can access more data and insights from Brave New Coin. Feel free to share or signup to our newsletter for more insights. Remember to check back next month for the latest of Capital Chronicles.
Nawaz Ahmed | Techemy Advisory
Equity Capital Raising
Over $67M was raised in traditional equity offerings in May 2019.
01/05/2019 | Kronoverse | Undisclosed | Gaming | USA
Kronoverse, an independent game development company behind the blockchain based CryptoFights 3D fighting game, has secured lead investment in its seed round from Calvin Ayre, founder of Ayre Group and CoinGeek. The investment comes on the heels of Kronoverse’s announcement that it will use the Bitcoin SV blockchain to power CryptoFights’ game networking layer.
02/05/2019 | Coti | $250,000 | Financial Services | Israel
Coti, a startup that is using DAG technology to provide a financial service, has raised an undisclosed amount from RSP Blockchain Tech Fund, the investment arm of Recruit Co.
02/05/2019 | Verif-y | Undisclosed | Identity | USA
Verif-y a blockchain-based identity platform, has raised investment from Ben Franklin Technology Partners, a venture capital firm.
02/05/2019 | Wave Financial | Undisclosed | Financial Service | USA
Fineqia Investments has taken an equity stake in Wave Financial Group. Wave undertakes early-stage investment, asset management, treasury management and strategy consulting to enhance the adoption of blockchain technologies worldwide.
04/05/2019 | Crusoe Energy Systems | $5,000,000 | Mining | USA
Crusoe Energy Systems Inc. has raised about $5M in seed financing from investors including Bain Capital Ventures and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss’s Winklevoss Capital Management LLC to build small data centres that can mine cryptocurrency, running on gas from the well site.
07/05/2019 | Blockchain Helix | Undisclosed | Identity | Germany
Blockchain Helix, a company developing an identity platform using blockchain technology, has raised a seven-figure investment from FinLab EOS VC Fund and FinLab AG.
07/05/2019 | Data Gumbo | $6,000,000 | Blockchain | USA
Data Gumbo, a Houston-based technology company that has developed a Blockchain-as-a-Service platform to streamline smart contracts management for industrial customers, has completed a $6M Series A equity funding round co-led by Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, the venture subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, and Equinor Technology Ventures, the venture subsidiary of Equinor, Norway’s leading energy operator.
07/05/2019 | QED-it | $10,000,000 | Enterprise Solutions | Israel
QED-IT, a developer of privacy technology for enterprise blockchains, has closed a $10M Series A round. The round was led by MizMaa Ventures, with participation from Ant Financial and RGAX as well as Meron Capital, Collider Ventures, Jovono and Target Global.
08/05/2019 | LunaPBC | $4,600,000 | Healthcare | USA
LunaPBC, the founder of LunaDNA, community-owned platform that will reward individuals for sharing health and genomic data, announced the close of a $4.6M funding round. Investors in this round include ARCH Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, F-Prime Capital, Illumina Ventures, and Osage University Partners.
09/05/2019 | KuBitX | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | Malta
KuBitX, a Malta-based digital asset trading exchange, has secured seed funding from foreign investors.
09/05/2019 | NeoWorld | Undisclosed | Gaming | Singapore
NeoWorld, a Singapore-based blockchain gaming company, has raised an undisclosed equity investment from institutional investors who have reportedly valued the project at tens of millions of US dollars. Investors include NEO ECO Fund, former Antpool CTO Hong Sen, Bfund Capital, and blockchain gaming ecosystem platform Field Chain Foundation.
09/05/2019 | Theta Labs | Undisclosed | Media & Entertainment | USA
Theta Labs, the developers of a decentralised video streaming protocol, has raised strategic investment led by Samsung NEXT and Blockchain, the crypto wallet. Other contributors include Uphonest Capital, Wei Fund, Igen Fusion Capital, and other private investors.
09/05/2019 | tZERO | $5,000,000 | Trading & Investment | USA
The long-awaited investment from Hong Kong fund, GSR Capital, into tZERO has finally come to a close. GSR had previously agreed to purchase $30M of tZERO security tokens, but have ended up investing just $5M for tZERO equity. This transaction values tZERO at $1B.
11/05/2019 | SpiderStore | Undisclosed | Blockchain | China
SpiderStore, a blockchain application platform, has raised an undisclosed amount from Junlian Capital Angel Wheel (Legend Capital Co Ltd).
13/05/2019 | Agoric | $4,000,000 | Blockchain | USA
Agoric, a startup aiming to make smart contracts more secure, has raised $4M in funding round from Ripple’s Xpring, Gumi Cryptos Capital, Kilowatt Capital, MetaStable Capital, Outlier Ventures, Lemniscap, Rockaway Blockchain and the Interchain Foundation, as well as additional funding from the Zcash Company, Naval Ravikant and Polychain.
13/05/2019 | Innoplexus | $10,000,000 | Data | Germany
Innoplexus, a firm that builds AI and Blockchain powered products for data access and analytics, has raised an eight-figure series C funding round. The round was co-led by FinLab EOS VC Fund, FinLab AG, and ATAI Life Sciences.
13/05/2019 | UNISOT | Undisclosed | Supply Chain | Norway
UNISOT™, a Norwegian venture with a supply chain management solution on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, has secured investment in its seed round from Calvin Ayre, founder of Ayre Group and CoinGeek.
15/05/2019 | InfStones | $2,000,000 | Staking | USA
Infstones, a staking startup, has raised a seed round of $2M led by Danhua VC (DHVC) and Plug and Play Ventures.
15/05/2019 | SWAZM | $559,000 | Storage | Romania
SWAZM, a Romanian startup building decentralised storage solutions for dapps, has raised $559K (€500K) from Armand Domuta, the CEO of Restart Energy, who is one of SWAZM’s first clients.
16/05/2019 | Terra | Undisclosed | Financial Services | South Korea
Terra, a South Korean blockchain based payments startup has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from LuneX Ventures. LuneX Ventures is the blockchain and cryptocurrency arm of Golden Gate Ventures.
17/05/2019 | ICOX Innovations | $120,000 | Blockchain | USA
ICOX Innovations, a US-based provider services for companies to develop and integrate blockchain into their business, has secured $120K in a financing round.
20/05/2019 | Tykn | $1,340,000 | Identity | Netherlands
Tykn, a startup using distributed ledger technology to develop a digital identity platform has received $1.34M (1.2M Euros) from Johan Mastenbroek, a Dutch IT entrepreneur.
21/05/2019 | Crowdz | $5,500,000 | Financial Services | USA
Crowdz, a firm building trade finance tools using blockchain, has raised $5.5M from Barclays Investment Bank, Bold Capital Partners, Chris Adelsbach, Clay Dedeaux, First Derivatives, Johnson Family Trust, Kerry Ritz, Matt Johnson, Payson Johnston, Steven Lee, Susan Standiford, Task Force X Capital, TechStars Ventures, and WS Investments.
22/05/2019 | Opennity | Undisclosed | HR | Hong Kong
Opennity, a community and referral economy connecting people in the blockchain industry has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Roark Capital, a US-based private equity firm.
22/05/2019 | Pixowl | $2,500,000 | Gaming | USA
Pixowl, a video game developer has raised $2.5M for a blockchain version of its popular game, The Sandbox. The lead investor for the round was Hashed.
23/05/2019 | BCDiploma | $1,340,000 | Education | France
BCDiploma, a firm building a blockchain solution for verifying educational documents like degrees, has raised $1.32M (1.2M Euros) in a venture round.
23/05/2019 | Unstoppable Domains | $4,000,000 | Internet | USA
Unstoppable Domains, a software company building domains on blockchains, has announced a successful $4M Series A round led by Draper Associates and Boost VC.
28/05/2019 | Identiq | $5,000,000 | Identity | Israel
Identiq, a firm who has built an Anonymous Verification Network which enables companies to work together to fight fraud, has raised a seed funding round of $5M led by Entrée Capital, with participation from Slow Ventures, Vertex Ventures Israel and Oryzn Capital.
28/05/2019 | OVEX | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | South Africa
OVEX, a South-African based exchange, raised an undisclosed sum from the Invictus Hyperion fund in a seed round.
30/05/2019 | CoinZoom | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | USA
CoinZoom, a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, has received a strategic investment from OKWAVE, a listed Nagoya Stock Exchange company and Japan’s first Q&A website.
Token Offerings
Over $1B was raised in various token offerings in April 2019.
07/05/2019 | Orchid Labs | $7,000,000 | Blockchain | USA
Orchid Labs, a startup building a blockchain protocol to allow private internet browsing has raised $7M in funding via their token sale which they announced in April 2018.
09/05/2019 | ThunderCore | $500,000 | Blockchain | USA
Huobi Global, launched their token launch platform, Huobi Prime Lite, and conducted their first IEO, selling 33M Thunder Tokens, from the ThunderCore project, and raising $500K.
10/05/2019 | bloXroute | $10,000,000 | Blockchain | USA
bloXroute, a company attempting to solve the scalability bottleneck for all blockchains has raised $10M via a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT). Eleven investors participated in the sale including Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Fenbushi Capital.
13/05/2019|ifinex|$1,000,000,000|Trading & Investment|Hong Kong
Bitfinex raised $1B USDT in a private sale. Investors include large private companies who made investments of over $100M each and many smaller investors who made investments over $1M each.
13/05/2019 | Nym Technologies | $2,500,000 | Privacy | Switzerland
Nym Technology, the privacy-focused startup, has raised $2.5M in private token sale. The funding round involved NEO Global Capital, Lemniscap, Edenblock and others.
14/05/2019 | Trias | $1,600,000 | Blockchain | China
Trias conducted their IEO on KuCoins Spotlight platform selling 400M tokens and raising $1.6M.
16/05/2019 | Allive | $1,800,000 | Healthcare | China
Allive conducted their IEO on the OKEx Jumpstart platform selling 300M tokens and raising $1.8M.
21/05/2019 | Cosmochain | $2,500,000 | Beauty | Korea
Cosmochain, a firm that has built a blockchain-based beauty content platform that was was selected as in initial dApp partner by Samsung for the Samsung S10, has raised $2.5M (2.98 billion won) by selling COSM tokens to US hedge fund Ulysses Capital.
21/05/2019 | Vodi X | $4,500,000 | Financial Services | USA
Bittrex hosted the Vodi X IEO which raised $4.5M by selling 450M tokens.
22/05/2019 | Reserve | $3,000,000 | Financial Services | USA
In the third Huobi Prime Offering, Huobi hosted the Reserve IEO, which raised $3M by selling 3B tokens (3% of total supply).
27/05/2019 | Harmony |$5,000,000 | Blockchain | USA
Binance Launchpad hosted the Harmony IEO which raised $5M by selling 1.5B tokens.
28/05/2019 | Chromia | $2,000,000 | Blockchain | Sweden
Chromia conducted their IEO on KuCoins Spotlight platform selling 40M tokens and raising $2M.
29/05/2019 | STP | $7,000,000 | Blockchain | USA
Standard Tokenisation Protocol (STP), a tokenisation protocol focusing on compliance and transparency of tokenised assets, has raised $7M in two private token sales from various venture capitalists. The first round raised $5M and the second round raised $2M. Some of the investors that participated are Neo Global Capital, BlockVC and AlphaBit.
Security Token Offerings
23/05/19 | Proxicoin | $100,000,000 | Media and Entertainment | USA
The Central Wealth Investment Fund of Hong Kong and Step Ventures and have invested $100M in Proxicoin, a security token that provides token holders with fractionalised ownership in film, television and other IP-based content, access which was previously only available to large institutions and wealthy individuals.
Mergers & Acquisitions
09/05/2019 | Hybrid Block | Trading & Investments | Singapore
Asia Digital Asset Exchange has acquired Hybrid Block, who operate a cryptocurrency exchange.
20/05/2019 | hireabl |Custody | England
Koine, a startup conducting custody and settlement of digital assets, has acquired hireabl a fintech company that has built a scalable platform for automated client on-boarding.
21/05/2019 | Unicorn Investment | Supply Chain | England
JMU Limited, a B2B online e-commerce platform that provides integrated services to suppliers and customers in the foodservice industry in China, has acquired Unicorn Investment Limited, a developer of asset transaction platform products based on blockchain technologies.
Disclaimer: Capital Chronicles is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide commercial, financial or legal advice. Nothing in this post constitutes an offer of securities or regulated financial products or financial services to any person.
