The blockchain market raised US$4.7 billion in the whole year, and 129 exchanges accounted for 40% of the total financing
Text | Edited by Zhou Wenyi | Produced by Bi Tongtong | PANews
PAData Insights:
In 2019, there were a total of 653 blockchain-related financing events, and the investment market has generally recovered. Financing activities in the second half of the year increased by more than 50% compared with the first half of the year.
In 2019, the inflow of funds in the blockchain-related financing market was nearly 4.7 billion U.S. dollars, with an average monthly financing of 391 million U.S. dollars and an average project financing of more than 8.66 million U.S. dollars.
Strategic investment and financing below Series A are the absolute mainstream.
Digital asset projects are the most concerned by investors, and exchanges are the key track of this category, and financing events account for 60%.
China and the United States far surpass other countries in the density and breadth of blockchain-related investment and financing, and the total investment and financing events account for 60% of the world.
The regional distribution of domestic blockchain-related investment and financing activities in 2019 has a strong correlation with the domestic blockchain industry distribution, and the industrial agglomeration effect is significant
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, in 2019, there were 653 blockchain-related financing events worldwide, with a total financing amount of nearly 4.7 billion US dollars (about 32.9 billion yuan); in addition, there were 35 public mergers and acquisitions in 2019, with a total The amount exceeds US$3 billion. It should be pointed out that this report only counts publicly disclosed financing information, and does not count financing forms such as IPO, IEO, ICO, and STO. Data sources for this article: PANews, Tianyancha, IT Juzi, Crunchbase, etc.
1. The annual blockchain-related financing exceeded US$4.7 billion, and the average financing amount of projects was about US$7.1975 million
In 2019, the number of financing events in the global blockchain industry totaled 653, and the frequency of financing generally showed a fluctuating upward trend. Among them, since 2019, from February to August, the blockchain project investment market has recovered, and the number of investment and financing has increased step by step. The financing activities in July-August have increased significantly, with a total of 146 cases in two months. In September, the investment and financing market cooled down, and the number of financing incidents dropped by nearly 20, a month-on-month drop of nearly 25%. Entering October, the global blockchain market ushered in the peak of capital activity that year. There were 84 financing events in that month, which was close to 13% of the annual financing events. However, in the four quarters of 2019, the investment and financing status in the fourth quarter The most unstable. The financing peak in October did not last long, and the investment and financing market became more active within two months. By December, there were only 39 investment and financing events, which was lower than the monthly average of 54.4 financing events in 2019.
In addition, the market heat increased significantly in the second half of 2019, and financing incidents in the second half of the year increased by 135 compared with the first half of the year, an increase of more than 50% month-on-month. It is worth mentioning that in 2019, the sentiment of the blockchain investment market is closely related to the Bitcoin market industry and the regulatory policies of various governments. Among them, the period when financing events were relatively active coincided with the rise of the Bitcoin market in that year and lagged behind; among them, during July and August, a large amount of capital entered the market, and investors' confidence in the industry greatly increased and continued to affect until October of that year; In addition, in the second half of this year, the global regulation of the encryption field has entered a cold winter, especially the high-profile stablecoin project Libra has suffered successive setbacks. In addition, although countries are open to blockchain-related technologies, they are not interested in cryptocurrency-related businesses. However, they are generally skeptical and have a strong regulatory attitude. For a while, the industry, represented by exchanges, has become the most sought-after "digital asset" related fields in a short period of time. more rational and prudent.
In terms of amount, global blockchain financing events in 2019 have raised a total of US$4.7 billion, with an average monthly gain of US$477 million. Among them, the total amount of financing in October was the highest, at 977 million US dollars, accounting for 21% of the total financing amount of the year. The average financing amount of 84 projects in that month was 11.629 million US dollars. The total monthly financing amount in February, June, July, October and December of 2019 all exceeded US$400 million. The lowest point of financing for the whole year occurred in May, when the total amount of financing in that month was only 179 million US dollars, less than half of the average.
Different from the trend of financing quantity, the overall financing amount does not rise due to the increase in financing events. Except for the peak month, the total monthly financing amount is generally stable and has a slight downward trend, which also means that the single investment amount of investment institutions is in the decline.
2. Strategic financing and financing below Series A are the absolute mainstream. The amount of single financing is concentrated in millions of dollars
From the perspective of the level of financing amount, except for the financing events that have not yet disclosed the specific amount, there are 27 projects with hundreds of thousands of dollars, 64 projects with one million and ten million dollars, and the least large projects with 100 million yuan financing. The overall financing scale of enterprises in the industry is relatively small.
Among the only 10 projects worth more than 100 million US dollars, except for the strategic investment of 1.961 billion yuan invested by Best Holdings and Zhongan Online, which was obtained by information service provider Zhongan Technology in July 2019, the remaining 9 projects are all related to Related to digital assets or financial scenario applications. The more representative ones are digital currency exchanges and financial payment services. In February, the exchange Kraken received an investment of 100 million U.S. dollars. In October, A.TOP Asian Exchange received a capital injection of 50,000 bitcoins from potato. This financing amount even ranked TOP 1 among the disclosed projects, but the financing news also Being questioned. In terms of payment, Indian payment giant PhonePe received investments of US$101 million and Rs 4.05 billion in July and October. In addition, two payment companies, Rapyd and Ripple, also received US$100 million and US$200 million in investments in the second half of the year, respectively. It is worth noting that in 2019, huge amounts of capital favored the financial payment sector, and payment applications accounted for 1/3 of the 9 financing events worth over US$100 million.
In addition to projects and strategic financing that have not disclosed the financing stage, seed/angel rounds ranked first in all financing stages with 308, accounting for 26% of the total financing stage. A total of 102 series A financings accounted for 15.6% of the total, and B rounds and above financing The total number is only 61, which is less than 10% of the total number of financing events.
The overall overview of the financing stage in the investment and financing market in the industry can often reflect issues such as the development stage and scale of the industry. As an emerging technology, blockchain will show an "S" shape in the social adoption rate during the process of its innovation diffusion. curve distribution. Judging from the increase in the number of financing throughout the year, the concentration of financing rounds in primary rounds with little change, and the type of financing gradually tending to multi-application implementation, it can be judged comprehensively that the current industry is in the rising period of early application, and the development of the industry is not yet saturated.
In addition, the dynamic trend of “financing begins to shift from early stage (before round A) to mid-to-late stage” can reflect that the industry is gradually expanding its scale and becoming mature. In the first quarter of 2019, the financing rounds were concentrated in the primary stage, and there were large-scale faults in the financing of the B round and above, but this situation continued to change over time. In the first quarter, the financing rounds were concentrated in the A round and below In the event, but by the fourth quarter, the financing rounds developed discretely in the middle and late stages. While the number ratio between each round dropped sharply, the distribution of rounds tended to be balanced, and the phenomenon of faults gradually decreased.
3. The favored financial exchanges have become the most profitable track
The exchange is a well-deserved winning track in 2019. The number of financing events on this track accounts for 60% of the total, and about 40% of the total financing amount is shared
Based on the development and changes of the blockchain industry, the expansion of the entire industry has led to the development of a large number of new ecology and scenarios. In the process of writing this report, PANews introduced a new industry classification standard, divided into five major first-level classifications of underlying platform & infrastructure, digital assets, financial application scenarios, physical application scenarios, and industry services, and has 60 categories under it. The rest of the secondary classification.
It can be seen from the first-level classification that, in addition to unknown classified items, digital assets accounted for 33% of the total, with a total of 214 cases. In addition, physical application scenarios ranked second, with a total of 147 cases. In fact, financial application scenarios and physical application scenarios are both landing scenarios. The cumulative number of the two has reached 219, which is comparable to digital assets in volume. This is related to the entry of large institutions and large amounts of capital into the blockchain market in recent years. .
Among them, the exchange accounted for 60% of the number of this category with 129 events, accounting for 20% of the total financing events, becoming the category with the highest financing frequency that year. In addition, only for the part of the exchange, the funds raised in 2019 were about 2.22 billion US dollars, accounting for about 40% of the total financing amount of the year.
In addition to exchanges, solutions/technical support and public chains in underlying technologies; information in industry services; games in physical application scenarios; and payments in financial applications can all account for the total financing frequency in China to more than 5%.
From the diagram, it can be seen that the divisions between the digital assets and the underlying platforms are more obvious. On the one hand, the development of these two categories is relatively long, and the competition and elimination in the more mature industries have already taken place. Step by step.
In the middle of 2019, in the trend of financing type preferences, investment enthusiasm has transitioned from digital assets to industry applications. On the one hand, this is related to the development stage of the industry itself; on the other hand, regulatory agencies in various countries have tightened the supervision of digital assets in 2019. Among them, China is the representative. After October 2019, multiple sets of heavy blows were directed at digital currency transactions. , Or it will lead to a financing winter for hot track digital exchanges.
4. China and the United States are active in financing, and financing events account for 60% of the world
From the regional distribution, it is not difficult to see that North America, Asia and Europe in the seven continents have become regions with relatively active investment activities. The Americas region is dominated by the United States. In 2019, a total of 181 financing incidents occurred, accounting for 27.7% of the world, and the investment field covered the entire industry. In the Eurasian continent, a total of 11 countries have received investment in blockchain-related projects, and the international distribution is more divergent. Among them, 22 financing incidents in the UK ranked TOP1 in Europe.
In Asia, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore and other places have established their own blockchain ecology with their good economic infrastructure. China (including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) has carried out a total of 191 blockchain-related cases in 2019. As for investment incidents, there were 3 in Japan, 9 in South Korea, 19 in India, and 47 in Singapore.
It is worth mentioning that markets such as India, Vietnam, and Brazil are speeding up the experimental application of blockchain-related industries due to their advantages such as demographic dividends and loose policy outlets, with a view to realizing a corner in the new round of technological revolution. overtake.
5. Financing events are mostly distributed in industrial agglomeration areas. The number of financing projects in Beijing leads the country
On the domestic front, since digital trading activities such as "ICO" have long been banned in China, the preference for financing types is slightly different from the overall global trend. Domestic industry investment tends to focus on underlying technologies and industry applications. Especially since October 2019, when the blockchain was promoted to the national strategy, industry applications led by the government have begun to blossom everywhere.
According to the analysis in the "2019 China Blockchain Industry Development Report" co-authored by PANews, China's blockchain industry is mainly concentrated in the four major blockchain industrial areas of Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Hunan, Guizhou and Chongqing Enclave. These areas often have a good industrial foundation, abundant talent advantages, and multi-faceted policy dividends. In 2019, there were 191 domestic blockchain-related financing events in China, with a total financing amount of 1.152 billion US dollars. From the perspective of investment and financing enthusiasm in various regions, the Bohai Rim region with Beijing as the core is more favored by investors in 2019. It has absorbed 96 financing projects in total throughout the year, and Beijing alone has 93 projects. It has attracted more than The investment of 370 million US dollars leads the country.
In terms of cities, Beijing performed most prominently. On the one hand, the region has a wide range of financing types, ranging from underlying technologies to industry development and application implementation; on the other hand, the total amount of financing in Beijing is not only the highest, but also has more large-scale financing events.
The performance of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is second only to Beijing, among which Hong Kong and Shenzhen are outstanding. The Greater Bay Area has invested 30 times, with a cumulative inflow of more than US$100 million in investment. In fact, in 2019, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has made frequent moves in regulation, policy and other aspects. Among them, the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission issued a series of regulatory measures within the year to pave the way for the blockchain industry, including the announcement of regulatory rules for virtual asset trading platforms; Shenzhen was positioned by the central government as a digital currency "experimental field."
Compared with the Bohai Rim and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta region has the weakest absorption effect. Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui have a total of 31 financings, including 16 in Shanghai, 13 in Zhejiang, and 2 in Jiangsu. from 0 to 0 in Anhui.
It is worth mentioning that Hainan also had 10 financing incidents this year.
