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Deal Flow – April 2020

Welcome to Deal Flow, a monthly report on investment in the blockchain space. Deal Flow provides a comprehensive listing of new capital raises, mergers and acquisitions, ICOs, IEOs, and STOs. The report identifies industry trends and follows the money with expert analysis and commentary - providing essential market intelligence for professional crypto investors.

According to Brave New Coin research, we have identified 14 companies that raised traditional equity investment in April 2020, and 12 of them disclosed financial details. These 12 companies raised over US$61M, with the largest raise (US$14.5M) completed by Crypto Finance AG.

In March 2020 the total capital raised was over US$368M between 16 companies which disclosed financial details. Compared to March, there were slightly fewer companies that announced successful raises in April, but if we discount the Bakkt raise, companies in March raised only US$7M more in investment. As expected, there was a decrease in the number of deals, which is possibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Deal Flow - April 2020 (1)
Fig 1: Investors in April 2020

Morgan Creek Digital and QBN Capital were the only two funds in April that made two investments each. Morgan Creek’s last investment was in February when BlockFi announced their successful capital raise.

Crypto specific investors that made one investment include Digital Currency Group, Consensys, Paradigm, Fenbushi Capital, Multicoin Capital, Huobi Capital, CoinFund and the Tezos Foundation. Of this list Paradigm, Fenbushi and Coinfund invested in token sales.

Well known general funds that also made an investment in April include Collaborative Fund, Initialized Capital, Firstminute Capital, Octopus Ventures and Union Square Ventures (USV).

Collaborative Ventures has been one of the most active general funds in crypto this year, having made at least one investment in each of the past four months. Both Collaborative Fund and USV’s only investment in April were in token sales and not equity deals. USV also invested in a token sale in March.

There was reduced participation from institutional and corporate investors in April, with only China Merchant Bank International (CMBI) and Dating.com making investments. Dating.com invested in a token sale while CMBI invested in an equity deal in participation with Multicoin Capital. It is understood that institutional participation has significantly decreased as a result of COVID.

Of the 12 companies that disclosed financial details, two raised over US$10M, raising US$25.5M between them. Three raised over US$5M, with US$18.7M raised between them and for the remaining seven companies the average raise was US$2.44M and together they raised US$17M. Seven of the 12 companies are based in Europe, with two in Germany, two in Switzerland and three in the UK. Three companies are based in the US, one is based in Canada while another does not provide a location.

As we saw in March, there were three token sales in April. All three were private token sales with participation from venture capitalists. The largest token sales in April was conducted by Thesis, makers of the Keep Protocol. They sold US$7.7M worth of KEEP Tokens for a new project. The round was led by Paradigm Capital, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, Collaborative Fund and others.

Deal Flow - April 2020 (2)
Fig 2: Equity and Token Sale Amounts for Different Industries in April 2020

Fig 2 displays the distribution of the disclosed capital raised in equity and token sales over various industries. Companies in the Trading and Investment segment raised US$26.6M. Enterprise Solutions raised over US$16M between two companies. The “Other” category raised US$12.6M and consisted of companies in four different sectors, one each in the Data, Insurance, Media, and Supply Chain sectors. Only one company announced a successful round in the Cryptocurrency sector, and that was a token sale by Thesis.

There were four acquisitions in April, one more than in March, but one less than in January and in February. None of the four acquisitions disclosed any financial details, and one was actually completed in November last year but was only disclosed in April. Three out of the four acquisitions were in the Trading and Investment sector, while one was in the Privacy sector. Of the four acquisitions, two were conducted by well-known companies in the crypto world, ShapeShift and BitGo.

At the end of April, Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, announced that they have raised US$515M for their “Crypto Fund II.” Like their “Crypto Fund I,” which was a US$300M fund, the new fund will primarily back crypto-related startups, but also will buy and hold some crypto assets.

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. Remember to check back next month for the latest Capital Chronicle.

Equity Capital Raising

US$61.28M was raised in traditional equity offerings in April 2020

01/04/2020 | Points Technology | Undisclosed |Enterprise Solutions | China

Points Technology, a company that provides a high performance and configurable blockchain-based confidential computing framework, has raised a multi-million-dollar Series A round. The investment was made by K2 Venture Partners.

07/04/2020 | Vertex Market | US$1,100,000 | Trading & Investment | UK

Vertex Market, a P2P crypto marketplace, has raised US$1.1M from a consortium of high net worth investors from Saudi Arabia. The initial pre-money valuation was set at US$2.2M and the fundraising was completed by the end of March 2020.

08/04/2020 | BitPanda | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | Austria

BitPanda, a crypto exchange, has received an undisclosed investment from SpeedInvest. This marks the first institutional investment in BitPanda.

08/04/2020 | Cadence | US$4,000,000 | Financial Services | USA

Cadence, a securitisation platform for private credit, has raised a US$4M investment round. The round was led by Revel Partners, with participation from Morgan Creek Digital, Nimble Ventures, Argo, Tuesday Capital, Manatt, Fantail Ventures and Recharge Capital.

08/04/2020 | Sila | US$7,700,000 | Enterprise Solutions | USA

Sila, an application programming interface platform for entrepreneurs to quickly tap banking tools using a stablecoin called SILA Token, has raised US$7.7M. The round was co-led by Madrona Venture Group and Oregon Venture Fund, with participation from Mucker Capital, 99 Tartans, Transferwise CEO Taavet Kinrikus and entrepreneur Jerry Neumann.

14/04/2020 | Atomic Loans | US$2,450,000 | DeFi | Canada

Atomic Loans, a startup building a bitcoin native solution for DeFi, has raised US$2.45M in a seed round. The round was led by Initialized Capital, with participation Morgan Creek Digital, as well as Joe Lallouz and Aaron Henshaw of Bison Trails, and existing investor, ConsenSys.

14/04/2020 | dForce | US$1,500,000 | DeFi

dForce, a unified network for decentralised finance protocols, has raised US$1.5M in a round led by Multicoin Capital. Co-investors include China Merchant Bank International (CMBI) and Huobi Capital.

16/04/2020 | Crypto Finance AG | US$14,500,000 | Trading & Investment | Switzerland

Crypto Finance AG, a crypto asset management, trading and custody firm, has raised around US$14.5M (CHF 14M) in Series B financing round. The round was led by Swiss investor Rainer-Marc Frey and Asia-based Lingfeng Capital, with participation from QBN Capital and other existing and new investors.

16/04/2020 | Minespider | US$3,060,000 | Supply Chain | Germany

Minespider, a blockchain protocol for responsible raw material tracking, has raised a total of US$3.06M (€2.8M) from combined sources, including the EU Commission’s H2020’s SME Instrument Phase 2.

16/04/2020 | Sprout.ai | US$2,500,000 | Insurance | UK

Sprout.ai, an insurtech startup that is applying AI and Blockchain to insurance claims, has raised US$2.5M in additional seed funding. The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Playfair Capital, and Techstars.

20/04/2020 | Applied Blockchain | US$2,470,000 | Enterprise Solutions | USA

Applied Blockchain, a distributed solutions specialist, has raised US$2.47M (£2M) in a funding round led by QBN Capital.

29/04/2020 | Gapless | US$6,000,000 | Enterprise Solutions | Germany

Gapless, a startup building a blockchain platform for vehicle management, has raised US$6M (€5.5M) in new funding. Investors in the round include Porsche, FinLab EOS VC Fund, and insurance entrepreneur Kersten Jodexnis, with his family office LA ROCA Capital.

29/04/2020 | Skew | US$5,000,000 | Data | UK

Skew, a data and trade execution platform for crypto derivatives has raised US$5M in funding. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Digital Currency Group, and existing investors Seedcamp and Firstminute Capital.

29/04/2020 | Taurus Group | US$11,000,000 | Trading & Investment | Switzerland

Taurus Group, a crypto infrastructure startup has raised ~US$11M (€10) in a Series A round. The round was led by Arab Bank Switzerland, with participation from Tezos Foundation and other investors.

Token Sales

US$10.45M was raised in traditional equity offerings in April 2020

02/04/2020 | Thesis | US$7,700,000 | Cryptocurrency | USA

Thesis, makers of the Keep Protocol, have sold US$7.7M worth of KEEP Tokens for a new project. TBTC, a trustless platform for making bitcoin-backed tBTC tokens on Ethereum. The round was led by Paradigm Capital, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, Collaborative Fund and others.

22/04/2020 | Kava Protocol | US$750,000 | DeFi | USA

Framework Ventures, a DeFi focussed fund has purchased US$750K worth of token from Kava Labs, a project building a DeFi platform similar to MakerDAO. Framework Ventures now own between 1–5% of all Kava tokens.

30/04/2020 | Props | US$2,000,000 | Media | USA

Props, a network built to reward application users with a financial stake in the network they contribute to, announced that they have raised approximately US$2M in token-sale financing. The investment was led by Union Square Ventures and Borderless Capital, with participation from GSR, Lvna Capital, SPiCE VC, CoinFund and the Dating.com Group.

Mergers & Acquisitions

14/04/2020 | Portis | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | Israel

ShapeShift, the self-custody crypto platforms announced the acquisition of Portis, a noncustodial software wallet solution.

16/04/2020 | Lumina | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | USA

BitGo has acquired Lumina, a service used by institutional investors to manage their crypto portfolios and track tax obligations.

17/04/2020 | Tenta Browser | Undisclosed | Privacy | USA

Avast acquired privacy-focused Tenta Browser, a Consensys backed company in November last year. The acquisition came to light as Avast launched its new secure, private browser for Android.

24/04/2020 | Blockgration | Undisclosed | Trading & Investment | Canada

Zoompass Holdings has acquired Blockgration Global Corporation and its subsidiaries, a leader in SaaS and software technology focused on blockchain and payment solutions.


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