Blockchain is Responsible for Nearly 1 in 5 Global Unicorns Today!
Blockchain is Responsible for Nearly 1 in 5 Global Unicorns Today!
This week we discuss the results of our YE 2024 Meet The Blockchain Unicorns report and the impressive value creation occurring as a result of blockchain & digital asset technology – which is now responsible for nearly 20% of the world’s early-stage ventures worth over $1bn.
In short, early-stage blockchain value creation is exploding
We just released the results of our year-end Meet The Blockchain Unicorns Report in December, and – as of year-end 2024, we’re excited to say there are now 111 private blockchain enterprises valued at over $1bn and, as of Dec 1st, 126 crypto projects trading at over $1bn – for a grand total of 237 early stage blockchain ventures worth over $1bn!
Which is just staggering, by any metric. Keeping in mind that to commercialize the early internet (i.e. web1) and eventually birth multi-billion dollar tech giants like Facebook and Twitter (i.e. web2), it took more than 50 years. A little over 15 years since Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin whitepaper and blockchain (i.e. web3)... is already basically there. Blockchain enterprise unicorns are cumulatively worth over $300bn and the crypto token unicorns altogether are worth over $3tn now.
There are also 29 public blockchain companies today, with a cumulative enterprise value of more than $140bn. And analysts like the team at Bitwise are already predicting the pack leader, Coinbase (valued at ~$70n today, up 3x since Q1), will overtake Charles Schwab next year as the world’s most valuable brokerage! (Charles Schwab has been around for more than 50 years… Coinbase is only 11 years old).
Altogether, as specialist blockchain investors for more than 10 years, since a time when there were less than 10 blockchain unicorns in the world – we’re very proud to say that…
Blockchain now accounts for 17% of the world’s unicorns!
As of year-end 2024, blockchain enterprise unicorns and crypto tokens worth $1bn+ together comprise nearly 20% of the world’s unicorns, as seen above – which is truly phenomenal. Meaning almost 1 in 5 of the world’s most valuable early stage ventures today are blockchain ventures.
Even more notable, in our view of course, is that we’ve been able to secure exposure to more than 40% of the 126 tokens worth over $1bn today and more than 50% of the 111 enterprise unicorns – a testament to our strategic focus and conviction in the future of digital finance.
So, if you had invested in the past decade, you could have similar exposure to nearly half of all the blockchain unicorns in existence today. And we’re super proud that we hit that metric, supported by a portfolio of more than 1,250 blockchain companies and projects around the globe!
Is it too late to invest now? Definitely not. Actually, quite the opposite!
We get this question a lot nowadays as people watch Bitcoin soar to new all-time highs and continue to hear politicians and financial leaders like Blackrock CEO Larry Fink say things like “Tokenization is the next generation for [global] markets”.
However, despite the immense progress we’ve seen in 2024, you are certainly not too late to invest. And this is critical to understand – few people really appreciate this;
“Today, 90% of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, retirement systems, insurance companies, wealth advisors, family offices and so on still have zero exposure at all. And only about 600m people hold any crypto at all, out of a global population passing 8.2bn now.
So if you invest in blockchain today, you are still quite early. In fact, if you invest in blockchain today, you’re still ahead of 7.6bn people – about 93% of the world!
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So you are certainly not too late. It’s actually quite the opposite. And we’ve been saying this for almost a decade. The transition to digital finance, enabled by blockchain technology, is inevitable – but like the commercialization of the internet and digitalization of communications and content (web1 and web2), this won’t happen overnight.
The digitalization of the world’s outdated financial infrastructure is only just beginning and savvy investors, who recognize this inevitability and stick to their guns, stand to make historical returns in the coming decade.
Download the report & watch the official webinar to learn more!
These were just a few of the high level takeaways. The full report has a lot more detail… like geographic breakdowns and analyses by layers in the tech stack… and the official report webinar has even more! Both can be found on our website, right here.
Author
Christopher Nelson
Head of Digital Asset Research