Techemy Advisory Capital Chronicles: September 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, we have identified thirty-nine companies that raised traditional equity investment in September 2019, and thirty-one of them disclosed financial details of their raises. These thirty-one companies raised over $179M, with the largest raise ($23M) being conducted by Elliptic. September saw nine more companies than August (30) raise capital and more companies in September disclosed financial details of their deals.
Most of the usual investors participated or led rounds for deals announced in September as seen in Fig 1 above. Fenbushi Capital and Digitial Currency Group made three investments each. Hashed, Galaxy Digital, Coinshares and Binance made two investments each. Other crypto/blockchain investors that made at least one investment include Coinbase, Morgan Creek Capital, NGC Capital, Placeholder, Medici Ventures, Ripples Xpring, and Arrington XRP Capital.
There were a range of traditional VCs and corporates that took part in investment rounds in September. Naspers Ventures the venture arm of the multinational internet company Naspers, made two investments. Fidelity, one of the largest asset managers in the world, made two investments directly and two through Avon Ventures, a venture capital subsidiary of Devonshire Investors, the private equity arm of Fidelity. Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, three tier-one VCs, also made investments. Other investors include two of Chinas largest companies, Tencent and Alibaba, and a few of Japans largest companies, Nomura, MUFG, SBI Group, Rakuten and Mitsui Fudosan. Barclays, Warner Music Group, Bloomberg Beta, and HTC were other traditional companies that made investments.
Elliptic raised $23M, the largest raise of September. Elliptic, is a company focussed on crypto-risk management. Its Series B round was led by SBI Group, with participation from London-based AlbionVC, and existing investors SignalFire, Octopus Ventures and Santander Innoventures. Of the thirty-one companies that disclosed financial details, six raised over $10M and between them, they raised $97.7M. There were fourteen companies that conducted seed rounds and three companies that conducted pre-series A rounds. The average raise for these companies was $3.64M. There were eight companies that conducted Series A rounds and the average raise for these companies was $10.5M. Only six of the thirty-one companies that disclosed financial details are from the USA, the rest are from eleven other countries. Four from the UK, and two each from Australia, Canada and Germany.
There were eight token sales that were conducted in September. The largest of which was the SEC-qualified token offering from Blockstack. The token sale collectively raised over $23M. More than 4,500 individuals and entities participated in the 2019 token offering, investors also include Union Square Ventures, Lux Capital, Recruit Holdings, Arrington XRP Capital, SNZ, Hashkey Group, Fenbushi Capital, Frontier Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Fundamental Labs, Tembusu Partners, Spartan Group, and other funds.
Of the eight token sales, seven were IEOs, of which we have financial details of four. Three IEOS held on the Liquid exchange did not disclose how much was actually raised. The four IEOs raised a total of $16.35M between them, with the Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange raising $6M on Liquid, the largest disclosed IEO raise of the month. The other three IEOs were held on Binance, Huobi and OKEx. Since the Telegram IEO, Liquid has rapidly increased the number of IEOs it conducts. Unlike Binance which conducts approximately one IEO a month, Liquid has been conducting at least four IEOs a month. There are at least five IEOs planned to be hosted on Liquid in October including the BNC IEO.
The graph above displays the distribution of the disclosed capital raised in equity and token sales over various industries. Companies in the Blockchain segment raised just over $90M as seen in Fig 2. 63% of the amount raised was in traditional equity raises. The Other category raised just under $50M and consisted of eleven companies in seven different sectors, two each in the Security, Property and Data sectors. The remainder are in the Social Media, Supply Chain, Identity and Gaming sectors.
We recorded one successful STO in September. Smartlands announced the completion of its pilot security token offering. The investment target was reached during the private placement of security tokens as a beneficial interest in shares of a student accommodation block in Nottingham, UK, valued by Knight Frank at £12.06 million in September 2018. Smartlands Platform raised enough capital from private investors to buy 30% of Winrise One Limited — the company that owns the property. Harbour and AssetBlock, two property tokenisation platforms made announcements to tokenise millions of dollars of property. iCap Equity announced to unlock liquidity for over $100M in real estate debt funds using the Harbour platform. AssetBlock through a joint venture with Lodging Capital Partners announced to tokenise $60M of exclusive hotel properties on its newly launched platform.
September saw ten acquisitions, the most since April this year. All ten deals did not disclose any financial details. 60% of the acquisitions were made by companies in the Trading & Investment sector while the remainder consisted of companies in Social Media, Copyrighting, Mining and Financial Services. A few recognised companies made acquisitions, such as Binance, Genesis Global Trading and Ripple. Ripple made two acquisitions, one directly and one through Xpring.
Three new funds were announced in September. Blockchain, the wallet provider, announced a $50M fund to invest in equity and tokens. This is being led by Sam Harrison, who joined Blockchain from Naspers Ventures last year. Nickel Asset Management, a UK licensed firm has raised $50M from funds of funds and family offices in the UK, Europe, North America and Singapore, to profit off the volatility of cryptocurrencies. 1confirmation has raised $45M for its second fund to invest in “founders building infrastructure and middleware for the decentralized web.” The firm is led by Nick Tomaino, an early Coinbase employee and counts amongst its LPs, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, Brendan Eich and others.
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 $179M was raised in traditional equity offerings in September 2019.
03/09/2019 | Bitmark | $3,000,000 | Property | USA
Bitmark, a property rights platform built on a blockchain, has raised a $3M Series A round led by HTC and participation from Alibaba, WI Harper and Digital Currency Group.
04/09/2019 | Elliptic | $23,000,000 | Cryptocurrency | UK
Elliptic, a company focussed on crypto-risk management has just raised a $23M Series B round. The round was led by SBI Group, with participation from London-based AlbionVC, and existing investors SignalFire, Octopus Ventures and Santander Innoventures.
04/09/2019 | Pledgecamp | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment
After a successful IEO on OKEx this August, Pledgecamp has raised strategic investment from Venture Capital firms Consensus Lab and Spark Capital.
05/09/2019 | Dapix | $5,700,000 | Blockchain | USA
Dapix, the developer of the FIO Protocol, has raised $5.7M in a Series A round led by Binance Labs, with participation from Blockwall Capital, NGC Ventures, and LuneX Ventures as well as existing investors contributing additional investments such as Access Venture Partners, Dundee Venture Capital, and First Mile Ventures.
05/09/2019 | DappRadar | $2,300,000 | Blockchain | Lithuania
DappRadar, a global platform for discovering and analysing dapps, has raised $2.33M in seed funding. The investment was led by Naspers Ventures, with participation from Blockchain.com Ventures and Angel Invest Berlin.
05/09/2019 | Starcave Global | $3,000,000 | Financial Services | USA
Starcave Global, developers of the color code security technology and payment solution, has raised $3M investment from the LDJ Cayman Fund.
06/09/2019 | Dapp.com | $1,000,000 | Blockchain
Dapp.com, a dapp market data and distribution platform has raised a $1M Pre-Series A round from Hashed, Du Capital and other investors.
06/09/2019 | Eligma | $4,390,000 | Financial Services | Slovenia
Eligma, a crypto payments startup, has raised $4.39M (€4M) in an investment round led by Bitcoin.com and Pangea Blockchain Fund.
06/09/2019 | Offchain Labs | Undisclosed | Blockchain | USA
Offchain Labs, a startup that provides the connective tissue between blockchain and businesses with a unique smart contract scaling and privacy layer called Arbitrum, has raised an undisclosed amount from Coinbase Ventures. Offchain Labs completed a $3.7M seed round in April this year.
09/09/2019 | Bitkub | $1,670,000 | Trading & Investment | Thailand
Bitkub, a Thailand based crypto exchange, has raised $1.67M in Pre-Series A round.
10/09/2019 | CasperLabs | $14,500,000 | Blockchain | USA
CasperLabs, a startup working to improve Ethereum 2.0 scalability, has raised a $14.5M Series A round. The round was led by financier Terren Peizer, via his personal holding company, Acuitas Group Holdings. Other investors that participated in the round include Arrington XRP Capital, Consensus Capital, Blockchange Ventures and Axiom Holdings Group, among others. The disclosed pre-money valuation for the round was $30M as reported by Cliff Sarkin, EVP of Partnerships at CasperLabs.
10/09/2019 | Jasper | $1,450,000 | Property | New Zealand
Jasper, a prop-tech company set to democratise investment in property, has raised $1.45M (NZD$2.3M) in seed funding in a round led by M7 Real Estate, with participation from Icehouse Ventures, James Property Group and RCP.
10/09/2019 | Kaiko | $5,500,000 | Trading & Investment | France
Kaiko, a digital assets data provider, has raised $5.5M (€5M) in a seed round led by global financial services investors Anthemis Group and Point Nine Capital with participation from CoinShares.
12/09/2019 | Bitfineon | $1,100,000 | Trading & Investment | Germany
Bitfineon, a German crypto and fiat exchange, has raised $1.1M (€1M) in seed funding from US-based fund B.I.G. Fintech, LP.
12/09/2019 | Coinme | $1,500,000 | Cryptocurrency | USA
Coinme, a cryptocurrency ATM startup has raised $1.5M from Ripples Xpring, for its recently open $11.8M series A round.
12/09/2019 | Dapper Labs | $11,200,000 | Blockchain | Canada
Dapper Labs, a spin-out company from Vancouver-based Axiom Zen, the creator of CryptoKitties, has raised $11.2M in a investment round with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Accomplice, Warner Music Group, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, AppWorks, Digital Currency Group, Autonomous Partners, Fenbushi, Animoca Brands, SV Angel, Version One, CMT, and CoinFund, and others. Dapper is Warner Music’s first blockchain investment, while contributing less than $1M to the convertible security, the media giant’s presence is notable for the size of the audience at its disposal.
12/09/2019 | Diacle | Undisclosed | Advisory | UK
Diacle, a UK based blockchain consultancy has received a strategic investment from BnkToTheFuture.
12/09/2019 | Topl | $850,000 | Supply Chain | USA
Topl, a startup building a blockchain platform to verify sustainable and fair trade products, has raised an $850K seed round from local investors.
12/09/2019 | Uhive | $2,300,000 | Social Media | UK
Uhive, a social network with a blockchain base, has raised $2.3M to launch its Beta app in Q3 2019.
12/09/2019 | Young Platform | $861,000 | Trading & Investment | Italy
Young Platform, a crypto exchange has raised over $861K (€787K) from 751 Italian and British Investors on the crowdfunding platform Seedrs.
17/09/2019 | Mars Finance | Undisclosed | Media | China
Mars Finance, a Chinese cryptocurrency and blockchain news website, has raised investment from Binance Holdings. This is Binance’s first strategic investment in China.
17/09/2019 | NXM Labs | $2,500,000 | Security | USA
NXM Labs, a company building security technology using cryptography and DLT, has added $2.5M to its seed round from existing and new investors. The total seed financing stands at $8.2M.
17/09/2019 | OpenSC | $4,000,000 | Supply Chain | Australia
OpenSC, an impact venture developed in partnership by the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia and BCG Digital Ventures, the global corporate venture investment, and incubation arm of BCG, announced that it has raised $4M in seed funding from strategic impact investors including Working Capital and Christian Wenger, founder of digitalswitzerland.
18/09/2019 | IoTeX | Undisclosed | IoT
IoTeX, IoT focused blockchain platform, has raised capital from Hashkey Capital.
18/09/2019 | GK8 | $4,000,000 | Cryptocurrency | Israel
GK8, a cybersecurity startup building the first-ever offline system to send cryptocurrencies, has raised $4M in a round led by Israel Discount Bank’s venture arm Discount Capital and Check Point co-founder Marius Nacht. There was also participation from EdenBlock, iAngels, IDEAL-HLS, StratX, and Israel Innovation Authority.
23/09/2019 | Elementus | $3,500,000 | Cryptocurrency | USA
Elementus, a company focussed on blockchain analytics, has raised $3.5M in a round led by Morgan Creek Capital, with participation from Avon Ventures, a venture capital subsidiary of Devonshire Investors, the private equity arm of Fidelity Investments’ parent company, and Stage 1 Ventures and Robot Ventures.
23/09/2019 | Immutable | $15,000,000 | Gaming | Australia
Immutable, a company that builds video games with player-owned assets using blockchain, has raised $15M in a Series A round led by Naspers Ventures and Galaxy Digital EOS VC Fund. There was also participation from Apex Capital Partners.
23/09/2019 | Kronoverse | Undisclosed | Gaming | UK
Kronoverse, an independent game development company behind the CryptoFights fighting game, has secured a second round of investment from Calvin Ayre.
23/09/2019 | Matter Labs | $2,000,000 | Blockchain | Germany
Matter Labs, an R&D company focused on zero-knowledge proofs and their practical application in public blockchains, has raised a $2M seed round led by Placeholder and joined by 1kx, Dekrypt, Hashed, and Dragonfly Capital Partners.
24/09/2019 | Everledger | $20,000,000 | Blockchain | UK
Everledger, a company which develops blockchain-based solutions, has raised a $20M Series A round with participation from Tencent Holdings, Graphene Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Rakuten, Fidelity and Vickers Venture Partners.
24/09/2019 | Flipside Crypto | $7,100,000 | Data | USA
Flipside Crypto, a data insights company for blockchain and crypto companies, has raised a $7.1M seed extension round. The round was led by Galaxy Digital Ventures, with participation from Collaborative Fund, CMT Digital and Avon Ventures. Previous investors, including Digital Currency Group, True Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, trueVentures and Boston Seed, also backed the round.
24/09/2019 | Knøx | $8,250,000 | Trading & Investment | Canada
Knøx, an institution focused digital asset custody startup, has raised $8.25M in a seed round led by Initialized Capital. Other participants include iNovia and Fidelity.
24/09/2019 | Securitize | $14,000,000 | Trading & Investment | USA
Securitize, a security token issuance platform, has raised $14M in an extension of its Series A round. Participants include banks Banco Santander, MUFG and Nomura Holdings, Japan’s telecommunications operator KDDI, Mitsui Fudosan, Kenetic Capital and Fenbushi Capital also participated in the round alongside its existing series A investors, Blockchain Capital, SPiCE VC, and SeedRocket4Founders.
25/09/2019 | Fold | $2,500,000 | Financial Services | USA
Fold, a bitcoin payments startup has raised a $2.5M seed round from Craft Ventures, CoinShares, Slow Ventures, Goldcrest Capital, Fulgur Ventures, and others.
25/09/2019 | Skew | $2,000,000 | Data | UK
Skew, a cryptocurrency derivative data provider has raised a $2M seed round led by Firstminute Capital with participation from Seedcamp, Kima Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, and QCP Capital.
26/09/2019 | Pixel Wallet | Undisclosed | Cryptocurrency
Pixel Wallet, a startup which enables images files to embed a full Bitcoin SV transaction has received investment from online gaming and technology entrepreneur Calvin Ayre.
26/09/2019 | Evernym | $8,000,000 | Identity | USA
Evernym, a developer of self-sovereign identity solutions, has closed an $8M Pre-Series A funding round with investors including Barclays Ventures and Medici Ventures. Medici Ventures contributed $2M via a SAFE.
26/09/2019 | StrongSalt | $3,000,000 | Security | USA
StrongSalt, an encryption platform-as-a-service powered by blockchain, has raised a $3M seed round from Valley Capital Partners.
30/09/2019 | BlockApps | Undisclosed | Enterprise Solutions | USA
BlockApps, a provider of an enterprise blockchain platform, has raised a Series A round led by Fitz Gate Ventures with participation from Elliptic Curve Ventures, Bloccelerate, Fenbushi Capital, Galaxy Digital Ventures and follow-on investment from Consensys.
Token Offerings
Over $39M was raised in token sales in September 2019.
10/09/2019 | Blockstack | $23,000,000 | Blockchain | USA
Blockstack’s SEC-qualified token offering ended alongside its Asian strategic round conducted as a Reg S offering. The token sale collectively raised over $23M. More than 4,500 individuals and entities participated in the 2019 token offerings, investors include Union Square Ventures, Lux Capital, Recruit Holdings, Arrington XRP Capital, SNZ, Hashkey Group, Fenbushi Capital, Frontier Ventures, IOSG Ventures, Fundamental Labs, Tembusu Partners, Spartan Group, and other funds.
11/09/2019 | Whole Network | $1,500,000 |Blockchain | China
Whole Network was the sixth IEO on the Huobi Prime platform and raised $1.5M by selling 750M tokens through a lottery.
11/09/2019 | X-Power Chain | $3,000,000 | Blockchain | Singapore
X-Power Network conducted an IEO on the OKEx Jumpstart platform and raised $3M by selling over 600M tokens through a lottery.
13/09/2019 | LCX | $6,000,000 | Trading & Investment | Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange has conducted an IEO on Liquid and has raised $6M by selling 100M tokens.
16/09/2019 | Band Protocol | $5,850,000 | Blockchain | Thailand
Band Protocol conducted an IEO on the Binance Launchpad platform and raised $5.85M by selling 12.4M tokens through a lottery.
16/09/2019 | nahmii | Undisclosed | Blockchain | Norway
nahmii has conducted an IEO on Liquid and is raising an undisclosed amount.
17/09/2019 | roobee | Undisclosed | Trading and Investment
roobee has conducted an IEO on Liquid and is raising an undisclosed amount.
24/09/2019 | MyTV Token | Undisclosed | Media | France
MyTV Token has conducted an IEO on Liquid and is raising an undisclosed amount.
Security Token Offerings
24/09/2019 | Smartlands | Undisclosed | Property | UK
Smartlands announced the successful completion of its pilot security token offering. The investment target was reached during the private placement of security tokens as a beneficial interest in shares of a student accommodation block in Nottingham, UK, valued by Knight Frank at £12.06 million in Sept 2018. Smartlands Platform raised enough capital from private investors to buy 30% of Winrise One Limited — the company that owns the property, with the remaining 70% being held by the original developer Windermere Capital Investments Ltd. and Shojin Property Partners. Shojin Property Partners is the manager of the investment.
Mergers & Acquisitions
03/09/2019 | JEX | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | Seychelles
Binance has acquired JEX, a crypto-asset trading platform offering spot and derivatives trading services.
04/09/2019 | InteliClear | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | USA
Prometheum acquired InteliClear technology in its Regulation A+ refiling in a move to become the first compliant cryptosecurity clearing firm in the US.
04/09/2019 | Vanbex Group | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | Canada
Hyperion Technologies has acquired the blockchain technology products Rocket and CryptoTaxes from Vancouver-based blockchain technology firm Vanbex. Rocket offers a smart contract solution for creation, deployment, and issuance of digital assets, and CryptoTaxes simplifies tax filings for capital gains and losses in relation to crypto asset trading. Having these products in Hyperion’s offerings will expand the Company’s breadth and enrich the value it can be capable of delivering to its clients.
10/09/2019 | Binded | Undisclosed | Copyright | USA
Pixsy has acquired Binded, a copyright platform built on the blockchain.
18/09/2019 | TokenMarket DEX | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | UK
Payrue, a crypto payment and wallet solutions, has entered into a partnership with TokenMarket and has acquired its decentralised crypto exchange.
19/09/2019 | Qu Capital | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | USA
Genesis Global Trading has made its first-ever acquisition. Genesis acquired Qu Capital, a quant trading a research firm.
27/09/2019 | Stax Digital | Undisclosed | Mining | USA
Core Scientific, a blockchain and AI firm, has acquired Stax Digital, the creator of the cryptocurrency mining product, Honeyminer.
27/09/2019 | Taringa | Undisclosed | Social Media | Argentina
RSK, a subsidiary od IOVLabs who built a smart contract platform powered by the bitcoin network, has acquired the Spanish social media platform, Taringa.
28/09/2019 | Logos Network | Undisclosed | Financial Services | USA
Ripples Xpring, has acquired Logos Network, a startup developing payments solutions focused on speed and scalability. The Logos team will join the Xpring team to build a DeFi system built on XRP.
30/09/2019 | Algrim | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | Iceland
Ripple has acqui-hired Algrim, an Iceland based crypto trading firm and experienced developer of crypto trading platforms.
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.
