Venture capitalists have sometimes made questionable investments in the past.
But they’ve also made some of the biggest investments in the past.
Think companies like Uber, Airbnb … these are businesses that really started from nothing.
And that’s something we’re seeing right now with blockchain companies.
So, today, I want to talk to you about blockchain, and why you can’t afford to ignore it.
(If you’d prefer to read a transcript, click here.)
Hey everyone. Steve Fernandez here with this week’s edition of Market Insights.
I want to talk to you about blockchain, and why you shouldn’t be ignoring blockchain right now.
There’s a lot of “smart money,” a lot of attention from smart people in the public markets on blockchain right now.
So before we get into this video, if you’re new to the channel, or if you’re coming back and you haven’t already subscribed, click the Subscribe button.
That way, you can get our content every Friday when we release it.
Blockchain Is Growing Fast!
I mentioned that there’s a lot of smart people, a lot of “smart money” going into the blockchain space right now.
I don’t know if you’re going to consider them smart because venture capital has sometimes made questionable investments in the past.
But they’ve also made some of the biggest investments in the past. Think things like Uber, Airbnb … these are companies that really started from nothing and saw a ton of investment over time from venture capital.
And that’s something that we’re seeing right now as well in the private market with blockchain companies.
Venture capital is pouring a ton of money into blockchain. Last year, we saw a 700% increase in funding for private blockchain companies, which surpassed $25 billion.
That’s not a $25 billion valuation. That’s $25 billion in funding. That’s a tremendous amount of money.
And at the beginning of the year, so the beginning of 2021, there were only nine unicorns. There were only nine blockchain companies in the private market that were valued at $1 billion or more.
By the end of 2021, that number had hit 41.
So as you can see, not only is there a lot of money pouring into the space, but the valuations are increasing.
What that tells me is that venture capital, these early-stage investors that have a knack for spotting the next big thing, they’re really going all in.
They’re doubling down on blockchain right now, and it’s doing two things.
Blockchain Technologies Are Exciting Everyone!
It’s attracting some retail investors like myself. We see this from the outside, so we’re interested.
But it’s also attracting some of the best tech talent, which can only help build out these blockchain companies even further and help them reach their potential.
Many are very excited about blockchain technology and what it can do for the future, and also because there’s so much money pouring into the space.
Obviously, you have people that are working at some of the Big Tech companies, and it’s a gold mine for them, and they want to jump in and get paid.
So I expect that we’re going to continue seeing top talent and top investment into blockchain companies.
It’s not just private companies that we’re seeing show interest in blockchain companies. They’re getting urgent attention from public companies as well.
I measured this by looking at the amount of times that crypto and blockchain were mentioned by the CEOs or other management of publicly traded companies.
And you can see in this chart that it’s just continuing to rise each quarter.
What that tells me is that management either is very optimistic about blockchain and sees it as transformational for their business model, or they feel threatened by the prospects of blockchain.
They feel a need to talk about it and translate that to analysts, to people attending conferences. They want people to know this at conferences and at things like earnings calls.
So this is front and center to investors and analysts. I don’t see this slowing down as well. That’s a pretty strong trend.
And if anything, I expect that we’ll see more blockchain companies come to the public markets. Obviously, we’ve had Coinbase in the last couple of years, and that was a huge IPO.
The most straightforward way to get exposure to blockchain now, and probably the most potentially financially rewarding, is investing in crypto.
You can do that by buying tokens that are associated with some of the more innovative crypto projects.
And my colleague Ian King is really the crypto guy here. I follow blockchain pretty closely, but he’s had a lot of success in picking out the best-performing cryptos. I’m sure he’ll talk about some of those in future videos.
But if you want to get access to his insights and his future picks and his current picks, you’re going to want to check out his Next Wave Crypto Fortunes service.
So that’s going to do it for today’s video. Again, you don’t want to sleep on blockchain now because some of the best investors, some of the best people at spotting trends and even some of these more mature companies, they all want a piece of blockchain.
So you should as well. You don’t want to miss that trend.
Thanks for watching. We’ll talk to you next week.
Regards,
Research Analyst, Strategic Fortunes
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