The blockchain industry is experiencing an investment boom. In 2021, venture investors around the world have already invested $15 billion in projects based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), as well as in crypto startups. According to the analytical company CB Insights, this is 384% more than during 2020. Recall that then the volume of investments barely exceeded $3 billion. According to the results of the third quarter alone, the volume of investments is approaching $6.5 billion, and this is almost 9 times more than in the same period last year.
The number of transactions involving crypto and blockchain projects has also radically increased. CB Insights estimates that on average there were 4.5 deals per working day, with a total of 286 (an increase of 71% year-on-year). And this is only a little less than in the second quarter of this year. Interestingly, Coinbase Ventures turned out to be the most active investor, in the third quarter it accounted for 24 transactions, which is more than 2.5 times more than the nearest “competitor”.
Blockchain — and the crypto industry, compared to the same period last year, growth amounted to more than a thousand percent (according to the results of the third quarter of 2020, the volume of investments amounted to $263 million, according to CB Insights). At the same time, the dynamics of market growth remains the same for the fifth quarter in a row. Asia remains the next largest market,
The number of blockchain unicorns is also growing on the market, their number is already more than three dozen. At the same time, 12 unicorns appeared just in the third quarter, this is the highest level of “birth rate” in the history of the industry. More than half of them, by the way, come from the American market.
Investors bet on NFT
CB Insights analysts highlight several market niches that attracted the most attention of venture investors last quarter. And it is possible that market growth will continue in the future precisely due to the latter.
The promising sector of the industry, which shows serious growth, was NFT projects. Since the beginning of 2021, the volume of investments in the market has already increased by more than 6500% compared to the whole of 2020. In total, over the current year, investors around the world have invested more than $2 billion in NFT projects, while more than 90% of transactions were in early stage projects. The market attracted the bulk of investments in the third quarter, investors invested about $1.3 billion in the NFT sector. At the same time, almost half of this volume was received by European market players. The largest transaction on the market amounted to $22 million, over the year this indicator grew by 450%.
Investments were attractedby the football fantasy emulator Sorare with NFT-cards of players, by the creator of the game CryptoKitties and blockchain Flow Dapper Labs, as well as by the platform for trading NFT OpenSea.
Also, an investment boom occurs in the crypto exchange segment, CB Insights said. The latter in the third quarter were able to attract almost $2 billion in investments, and this is 2240% more than a year earlier (then crypto exchanges “raised” only $84 million).
The investors also began to pay attention to the developers of crypto wallets, including custodial ones. In the total amount of financing since the beginning of the year, the share of investments in this area amounted to 26%, in just 9 months of 2021, investors invested almost $4 billion in such decisions. Investments increased by 333% year-on-year.
“Our forecasts are confirmed that blockchain technology will remain in the global economy not only by thousands of homegrown cryptocurrencies of varying degrees of integrity and liquidity: it can create entire new sectors of the economy and revive existing ones. Just as the financial sector saw the emergence of the Eurodollars market, markets for various derivatives, so new elements of cryptoeconomics infrastructure are gaining a place under the sun seriously and for a long time. And this story is not only about Bitcoin and Ethereum. ” — comments Professor Artem Genkin, — author of the book (together with A. Mikheev) “Blockchain: How it works and what awaits us tomorrow.”
NFT based on the drawings by Yuri Aratovsky are presented at the link: Binance NFT in the auction format. Any Binance users can participate in the auction. NFT marketplace Binance uses the same account system as Binance.com. New users of the marketplace will need to sign up for the Binance.com.
This material contains only reference information about NFT facilities, is not aimed at advertising financial assets and is not a recommendation for any actions.
By Olga Blinova