By leading a huge $50M investment into bitcoin payments firm Circle in April 2015, Goldman Sachs became the first bulge bracket bank to invest in a digital currency or blockchain startup.
While Goldman’s investment was a bold move toward Wall St.’s acceptance of the technology, who are the other financial services firms and corporate strategic investors with stakes in the bitcoin/blockchain ecosystem?
There are several and the list is growing.
Within financial services, firms that have investments in the space include Spanish banking group BBVA, investment management firm Fortress as well as exchange behemoth, NYSE Euronext. Within the broader group of strategics, Google Ventures has been an active corporate VC in the digital currency space — with investments in companies including bitcoin options exchange LedgerX, recently-shuttered startup Buttercoin and Ripple Labs.
1st Update (3/2/2016): We originally published this infographic 5/22/15 and updated it 3/2/16, as strategic investors across insurance (New York Life, Transamerica Ventures, AXA Strategic Ventures), telecom (Verizon Ventures, Orange Digital Ventures) and payments (Visa, MasterCard, American Express) among others dive into blockchain investing. As the chart below highlights, over 70 corporate and strategic investors are now invested in blockchain and/or bitcoin startups vs. fewer than 20 as of May 2015.
The original chart highlighting the growing group of strategic/corporate investors in both financial services and tech in the digital currency space since 2009 is below.
