research

Coinbase’s direct listing on Nasdaq signifies a landmark moment for the digital asset industry. Coinbase’s shares on the Nasdaq exchange began at an initial price of $381, which implies a market capitalization just shy of $100 billion at $99.5 billion for the US-based crypto exchange. The size of Coinbase’s direct listing alone has reset the […]

NEAR Protocol is an open-source platform for decentralized applications, similar to many use-cases offered by Ethereum today. Founded in 2018 by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin, the platform intends to solve the technical barriers associated with smart contract platforms and offer higher throughput and less costly transaction fees.  Since NEAR has been in development, the […]

The Block Research analyzed a total of 314 blockchain-related investment deals that occurred during Q1′ 21 to identify which crypto funds have been the most active to the start of the year. Using Pitchbook, Crunchbase, and our own sourcing/filtering, we mapped out the top 10 most active funds to determine specific verticals or themes that […]

Q1′ 21 was a historical quarter in venture funding for the crypto/blockchain sector. In aggregate, roughly $3.18 billion was allocated to crypto/blockchain projects, with an average deal size of approximately $12.7 million and a median deal size of $2.0 million. Additionally, five funding rounds that occurred this quarter all qualified as one of the fifteenth […]

Founded in 2018 by Anil Lulla, Medio Demarco, Tom Shaughnessy Jr, Kevin Kelly, and Yan Liberman, Delphi Digital began as an independent research boutique that provided analysis and research on institutions’ digital asset markets. Today, the firm also provides consulting for token projects and operates a podcast and an investment venture arm launched in July […]

Algorand is a public blockchain network that intends to provide a highly scalable platform for decentralized applications and financial solutions. The Algorand project was founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali, a Professor and computer scientist at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.  Past work accomplishments by Micali include being awarded the Turing Award and […]

Multicoin Capital is a thesis-driven investment firm that invests exclusively in digital assets and blockchain companies. The crypto hedge fund was founded in 2017 by Kyle Samani and Tushar Jain based on their beliefs that open, trust-minimalized distributed ledgers will reshape many sectors of our global economy. The firm’s investment thesis for digital assets can […]

Founded by Barry Silbert in 2015, Digital Currency Group (DCG) was originally made up of two bitcoin businesses, Genesis Global Trading, a cryptocurrency OTC trading firm and Grayscale Investments, a cryptocurrency asset management firm.  Since then, DCG has made investments in numerous verticals that stretch the digital asset space’s entirety and has become one of […]

Avon Ventures is a digital asset venture capital firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, and affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. Although the two firms share the same parent company, Avon’s operations are completely separate from Fidelity’s financial services.  Led by Sachin Patodia, the fund’s main area of focus to date has […]

Solana is a blockchain platform designed for high throughput and decentralized applications. The project was founded in 2018 by Alan Yu, Anatoly Yakovenko, Greg Fitzgerald, Raj Gokal, and Stephen Akridge.  The network has attracted an assortment of investors and ecosystem participants. In July 2019, it raised $20 million in a Series A led by Multicoin […]

Gemini is a regulated cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian for digital assets. Founded in 2014 by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the brothers were early pioneers and adopters in Bitcoin and the sector. The firm operates as a New York trust company, requiring the company to comply with fiduciary obligations, capital reserve requirements, and banking […]

CMS Holdings is a principal investment firm focused on the digital asset ecosystem. The firm was founded in early 2019 by Daniel Matuszewski, Bobby Cho, and Julien Seguin.  . Before founding CMS, Matuszewski and Cho had been in the over-the-counter trading space since the early days of the sector, working for the desks of firms […]

A common misconception about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) is that privacy can’t exist while transacting, which makes many citizens anxious about general-purpose or retail CBDC. In fact, transaction privacy is such a big factor for potential users that it was the top concern among respondents in the CBDC survey that the European Central Bank […]

In September 2020, the Crypto exchange Binance launched an Ethereum-compatible blockchain, with its exchange token BNB as the native token. Like Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) provides a smart contract platform for decentralized finance applications (DeFi). The rise and popularity of DeFi applications and demand for the Ethereum network have subsequently made it more costly […]

Each month The Block Research hosts an analyst call reviewing the most important topics from the month prior. This month Lars Hoffmann takes a look at January by the numbers. Ryan Todd shares insights from MicroStrategy’s historic Bitcoin Summit. Mika Honkasalo discusses Cosmos IBC and arguments for application-specific chains.

On January 27th, 2021, Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), delivered a speech for Stanford’s Hoover Institution policy seminar. His speech was titled ‘Digital currencies and the future of the monetary system,’ and it covered the digitization of money. Bitcoin, stablecoins, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) were discussed in […]

LedgerPrime is a quantitative and systematic investment firm focused on digital assets. The firm launched in 2017 as the principal trading arm of Ledger Holdings Inc., and in 2019 raised separate capital for trading and investment as a hedge fund. Aside from its active quantitative strategies, the firm has also been actively investing since April […]

In January 2019, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) started releasing a yearly central bank digital currency (CBDC) paper based on results from its global survey of central banks. The third paper, ‘Ready, steady, go? – Results of the third BIS survey on central bank digital currency,’ was recently published on January 27th. Central banks […]