Plummeting currency prices did not stop VCs from buying into bitcoin this week, opening their wallets daily to dish out a total of $54 million in early-stage rounds for five cryptocurrency companies.
The single week’s total accounts for 15% of the $360 million cash total poured into bitcoin companies over the past two years.
London-based bitcoin platform Blockchain started off the week with a bang, announcing a $30 million Series A round on Monday led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Wicklow Capital with participation from a list of investors including the ever active Richard Branson.
The Blockchain deal is the second largest venture round on record since bitcoin’s creation in 2009, runner up to the $40M Series A raised by Xapo in July.
Blockchain represents the third investment in cryptocurrency for Lightspeed, whose China-based branch has also been active recently in the bitcoin space.
Bitcoin-focused venture firms Crypto Currency Partners, Bitcoin Opportunity Fund, and Pantera Capital rack up the highest amount of deals in the space, but they’re not alone.
500 Startups has backed 8 bitcoin-related startups, Y Combinator 5, Buenos Aires-based NXTP Labs 4, and a16z 3. Even rapper Nas’ Queensbridge Venture Partners has gotten in on three bitcoin investments in the past year.
Check out CrunchBase Graph Insights and the CrunchBase Investor Leaderboard to discover some of your own connections.
Photo via Flickr user Zach Copley.
