According to our research, we have identified 18 companies that raised traditional equity investment in March 2020, and 16 of them disclosed financial details. These 16 companies raised over US$368M, with the largest raise (US$300M) going to Bakkt alone.

In February 2020 the total capital raised that we recorded was just under US$160M between 16 companies which disclosed financial details. Compared to February there were slightly fewer companies that announced successful raises, but if we discount the Bakkt raise companies in Feb raised more than double the amount of investment compared to March. As expected, last month we saw a decrease in the number of deals, which is possibly due to the COVID-19 situation.

Fig 1: Investors in March 2020

Digital Currency Group. Polychain and Castle Island Ventures made three investments in March. One of the Polychain investments was in a private token sale. Coinbase Ventures made two investments, of which one was a token investment.

Crypto specific investors that made one investment include Galaxy Digital, Consensys, Paradigm, NGC Ventures, Multicoin Capital, HashKey, Placeholder, Pantera Capital, BitMex and Medici Ventures.

Well known general funds that also made an investment in March include Collaborative Fund, Initialized Capital, Index Ventures, Bain Capital, Accomplice, a16z and Union Square Ventures. Collaborative Fund also made investments in January and February, while a16z and Union Square Ventures only invested in a token sale during March.

There was significant participation from institutional investors as well. CMT Digital, the digital asset investment arm of CMT, made two investments. Avon Ventures, a venture subsidiary of Fidelity, made one investment in March, and also made an investment in February. Other institutional investors include BCG, M12, which is Microsoft’s venture investment arm, and PayU.

As mentioned earlier, the largest raise of the month was announced by Bakkt. Bakkt has raised an additional US$300M of capital with participation from investors including Intercontinental Exchange, Microsoft’s M12, PayU, Boston Consulting Group, Goldfinch Partners, CMT Digital, and Pantera Capital.

After discounting Bakkt, of the 15 companies that disclosed financial details, only one raised over US$10M, and for the remaining 14 companies the average raise was US$4M and together they raised US$56.2M. Nine of the 16 companies are based in the US, while the remaining are based in five other countries, China, India, Singapore, Spain, and the UK.

We recorded three token sales in March. One was a public token sale on the CoinList platform, which raised US$1.76M. The other two were private token sales by Arweave and Acala Network.

Arweave, a storage focused blockchain platform, raised US$8.3M in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures.

Acala Network, a cross-chain Stablecoin platform based on Substrate, raised an undisclosed amount in a round which saw participation from Polychain, HashKey, KR1, Polkadot Ecosystem Fund, Web3.Capital, and others.

Fig 2: Equity and Token Sale Amounts for Different Industries in March 2020

Fig 2 displays the distribution of the disclosed capital raised in equity and token sales over various industries. Companies in the Financial Services segment raised just over US$25M. The “Other” category raised just over US$33M and consisted of seven companies in six different sectors, two in the Storage sector, while the remainder are in the Data, Gaming, Healthcare, Supply Chain and Verification sectors. As displayed, only one company announced a successful round in the Blockchain sector, and that was a token sale by Solana.

We recorded three acquisitions in March. The biggest, and probably most recognized, is the acquisition of CoinMarketCap by Binance. The acquisition was announced to be a US$400M cash plus stock deal. This is among the largest acquisitions ever made in the crypto space.

The other two acquisitions were in the Enterprise Solutions sector. Genesis Group acquired Blockchain Consulting GMBH and Brex the corporate credit card company acquired Neji, a software company that is simplifying the business adoption of distributed ledger technology.

Thanks for reading, we hope that you’ll find Deal Flow 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 newsletters for more insights.

Nawaz Ahmed | Techemy Advisory

Equity Capital Raising

Over US$368M was raised in traditional equity offerings in March 2020

05/03/2020 | AlphaPoint | US$5,600,000 | Trading & Investments | USA

AlphaPoint, a provider of white-label blockchain asset exchange software; announced that it has raised US$5.6M in new funding via a SAFE. The funding came from a private investor primarily, but there were other participants including Galaxy Digital.

**05/03/2020 | Zabo | US$2,500,000 | Financial Services | USA **

Zabo, which enables any financial services company to connect to their customers’ cryptocurrency wallets in a few lines of code, announced it has raised US$2.5M in new funding. The round was led by Moonshots Capital with participation from Blockchange Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Digital Currency Group, CoinShares, Tezos Foundation, Capital Factory and others.

06/03/2020 | GrainChain | US$8,200,000 | Supply Chain | USA

GrainChain, a blockchain-powered agricultural supply chain platform has secured US$8.2M in funding from Medici Ventures, Eden Block, and several other investors.

06/03/2020 | ProCredEx | US$3,500,000 | Healthcare | USA

Professional Credentials Exchange, a digital marketplace for credentialing that allows member healthcare organizations to securely share, exchange, and monetize their credential verification data, has completed a US$3.5M seed funding round. The round was led by Spectrum Health Ventures, with participation from Martin Ventures, The Hardenbergh Group, Florida Funders, and several strategic healthcare executives.

07/03/2020 | Horizon Blockchain Games | US$5,000,000 | Gaming | USA

Horizon, a developer of an Ethereum powered blockchain gaming platform, has raised US$5M. The round is led by returning investors Initialized Capital, and backed by Golden Ventures, DCG, Polychain, CMT Digital, Regah Ventures and ConsenSys.

09/03/2020 | Argent | US$12,000,000 | Financial Services | UK

Argent, a smart wallet for cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications, has raised US$12M (£9.2M) in Series A round. The round was led by Paradigm, with participation from Index Ventures, Creandum and Firstminute Capital. This investment marks Paradigms first investment in Europe.

09/03/2020 | PBOC Trade Finance Platform | US$4,700,000 | Financial Services | China

A Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), spearheaded blockchain trade finance platform has received special funding to the amount of US$4.7M (32.35M yuan) over the next three years.

10/03/2020 | First Digital Trust | US$3,000,000 | Financial Services | Hong Kong

First Digital Trust, the digital asset custody arm of Legacy Trust, has raised US$3M in funding from the venture studio, Nogle.

12/03/2020 | Phemex | US$3,500,000 | Trading & Investments | Singapore

Phemex, a cryptocurrency derivatives platform, has raised US$3.5M in funding. The round was led by NGC Ventures.

17/03/2020 | Bakkt | US$300,000,000 | Trading & Investments | USA

Bakkt has raised an additional US$300M of capital with participation from investors including Intercontinental Exchange, Microsoft’s M12, PayU, Boston Consulting Group, Goldfinch Partners, CMT Digital, and Pantera Capital.

17/03/2020 | Fluree | Undisclosed | Enterprise Solutions | USA

Fluree, a startup that provides a data-first technology stack, announced a seed extension round of funding with participation from Engage, a venture fund. The investment follows a seed round of US$4.7M in June 2019.

18/03/2020 | Attestiv | US$2,000,000 | Verification | USA

Attestiv, a startup verifying the authenticity of digital media and data using blockchain, has raised over US$2M in a seed round. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Plug and Play Ventures and Mentors Fund.

19/03/2020 | Billion Group | US$6,000,000 | Enterprise Solutions | UK

Billon Group, developers of a new type of distributed ledger technology that processes national currency and business documents, announced that they have raised US$6M in a Series A round. Investors in the round include FIS, Rising Tide, Mencey Capital, VCF III, existing investors, and prominent international managers and experts.

23/03/2020 | Ubirch | Undisclosed | Security | Germany

Ubirch, a blockchain and IoT security company, has raised its third round of funds in the seven-digit euro range. Investors in this rounds include hubraum, Deutsche Telekom’s tech incubator and NRW.BANK.

24/03/2020 | CoinDCX | US$3,000,000 | Trading & Investments | India

CoinDCX, a cryptocurrency exchange, has secured US$3M in Series A funding led by Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and HDR Group, operator of BitMEX with participation from other VCs.

25/03/2020 | Balancer Labs | US$3,000,000 | Financial Services | USA

Balancer protocol, a non-custodial portfolio manager, liquidity provider, and price sensor, has raised US$3M in a seed round led by Accomplice and Placeholder, with participation from CoinFund and Inflection.

26/03/2020 | Coin Metrics | US$6,000,000 | Data | USA

Coin Metrics, a cryptocurrency data provider, has raised US$6M in a Series A round. The round was led by Highland Capital Partners, and other participants include Communitas Capital, Avon Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Raptor Group, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Castle Island Ventures and Collaborative Fund.

26/03/2020 | Internxt | US$234,000 | Storage | Spain

Internxt, a company using blockchain to build a secure file storage platform, has closed a US$234K (€214K) seed equity investment round at a US$2.18M (€2M) valuation. Investors include SociosInversores, Delwik Group, ESADE BAN, and ex-directives from companies as reputable as Telefonica and Vodafone.

Token Sales

Over US$10M was raised in traditional equity offerings in March 2020

06/03/2020 | Arweave | US$8,300,000 | Storage | USA

Arweave, a storage focused blockchain platform, has raised US$8.3M in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures by selling its tokens. The new funding comes just four months after Arweave raised its last US$5M from Andreessen Horowitz, USV and Multicoin Capital.

26/03/2020 | Solana | US$1,760,000 | Blockchain | USA

Solana, a high-throughput distributed ledger technology-based platform, has secured US$1.76M in funding through its launch auction on CoinList. 80M tokens were sold for US$0.22 each.

27/03/2020 | Acala Network | Undisclosed | Financial Services | New Zealand

Acala Network, a cross-chain Stablecoin platform based on Substrate, has received funding from Polychain, Hashkey, P2P Capital, KR1, SNZ, Polkadot Ecosystem Fund, Hypersphere Ventures, Web3.Capital, Stake.Zone, Goodmore Capital, and Digital Renaissance.

Mergers & Acquisitions

**03/03/2020 | Blockchain Consulting | Undisclosed | Enterprise Solutions | Germany **

Genesis Group has announced the strategic acquisition of Blockchain Consulting GmbH (BC).

24/03/2020 | Neji | Undisclosed | Enterprise Solutions | USA

Neji, a software company that is simplifying the business adoption of distributed ledger technology, has been acquired by Brex.

31/03/2020 | CoinMarketCap | US$400,000,000 | Data | USA

Binance acquired CoinMarketCap for approximately US$400M in a cash and stock deal.