2021 has been a busy year for the crypto startups, thanks to the dramatic rise in Bitcoin and altcoins value.
Right now, the crypto market is a melting point of cutting-edge innovations in technology. And numerous startups are taking advantage of it.
Blockhain.com, a London-based firm that offers a platform to buy, hold, and use cryptocurrency, is one such company.
Baillie Gifford invested £72M
Recently, the UK company announced Baillie Gifford invested $100 million (approx £72 million) in a $300 million (approx £215 million) Series C funding round last month.
For those who aren’t familiar, Baillie Gifford is a storied 110-year-old asset management firm who were early investors in some of the biggest tech-enabled companies over the last 20 years (Tesla, Google, Amazon, Airbnb, and more)
According to Peter Smith, co-founder, the £72 million funding is the single largest investment in Blockchain.com to date, which represents another stamp of approval from institutional investors for digital assets.
Currently, the company has 31M verified users in over 200 countries. Also, the platform has witnessed a 3x increase in active users over the past 12 months alone, says the company.
IPO fever grips up
A wave of crypto startups is set to go public as investors pour capital into blank-check companies.
According to Renaissance Capital, around eight companies are planning to go public – Coinbase, eToro, MicroBT, Gemini Trust Co, Bitmain Technologies, and Bitfury.
A couple of weeks back, Coinbase made its debut in NASDAQ through a direct listing, which is considered as an alternative to traditional IPO. Will Blockchain.com follow the suit?
“We want to do it when the moment’s right for us, and we’re figuring out when that is,” Bockchain.com’s CEO Peter Smith told the Telegraph.
Blockchain.com, which is valued at around $5.2 billion (approx £3.72 billion), expects to go public at some point. Moreover, Peter declined to comment on the place – London or New York, he would like to float the share.
He claims that the company has seen a surplus of interest from private investors, with some orders reaching as much as $900 million (approx £645 million), or three times more of what the company raised.
Founded by Benjamin Reeves, Nicolas Cary, and Peter Smith in 2011, Blockchain.com provides digital wallets to buy, trade crypto, send, receive, secure, and borrow digital currencies. The company is on a mission to revolutionise the $14 trillion financial services industry.
Emmanuel Goh, CEO of Skew — a data analytics and trade execution platform focused on cryptocurrency derivatives – said: “It is clear that a gap has opened between private and public market’s valuation for tech companies, inciting startups to fast track a potential IPO. Given the current appetite for cryptocurrencies, I expect extremely strong demand for bellwether crypto companies that are already turning a profit.”
The post Baillie Gifford invested £72M in Blockchain.com: Will the UK company follow the Coinbase way? appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).
