Blockchain intelligence startup Chainalysis has raised $170 million at a valuation of $8.6 billion, double from $4.2 billion in June last year.
Given the current market crash where bitcoin fell below $30,000 on Monday, many believed that the rush of investors backing up crypto startups seen last year might cease. But Chainalysis in the latest round has seen its valuation increasing twofold, suggesting that investors are still favoring businesses in the crypto space.
$170 Million Funding Round
Chainalysis’ Series F funding round was led by Singapore-headquartered sovereign wealth fund GIC. It’s also an existing investor in the company, media reports said on Wednesday, attributing the information to an unnamed source.
Other investors in the latest round included Dragoneer, Durable Capital Partners, Blackstone, Sequoia Heritage, 9Yards Capital, Altimeter Capital Management, and SVB Capital.
In June last year, the company raised $100 million led by Coatue Management in Series E funding at $4.2 billion in valuation, and in March 2021, $100 million in Series D financing at over $2 billion in valuation.
Before the latest round, Chainalysis received $336 million in investments from Benchmark, Accel, Paradigm, and Coatue.
Growth Trajectory
The blockchain intelligence platform tracks data and transactions in the crypto space and provides intelligence to its clients. Its services are used in over 70 countries by financial institutions, crypto exchanges, cybercrime firms, and – most notably – law enforcement agencies. In 2020, it opened offices in Singapore and Tokyo to ramp up its presence in APAC.
In February 2021, America’s oldest bank BNY Mellon said it was planning to integrate Chainalysis to monitor and analyze crypto transaction data as it is gearing up to serve its customers with digital assets profile.
Chainalysis Tools, Intelligence
Recently, Chainalysis was in the news for introducing two new and free screening tools that promises to help the crypto industry easily identify addresses of sanctioned Russian individuals and entities. The first is an on-chain smart contract that stored the list of all embargoed people and entities. The second was an API that provided access to the same data for validating wallets on web and mobile devices.
In its latest report, Chainalysis said the NFT market has seen rapid growth in the first 4 months of 2022. Despite a bearish trend in the broader crypto market, $37 billion was spent on NFTs during the period, compared to $40 billion in the entire 2021, the report said.
