Blockchain Technology (Bitcoin) Market Overview and Innovation Quadrant – Q1 2017

The following post highlights how Venture Scanner categorizes the Blockchain Technology startup landscape, and presents our Innovation Quadrant showing how those categories compare to one another. The data for this post is through January 2017.

The above sector map organizes the sector into 12 categories and shows a sampling of companies in each category.

Our Innovation Quadrant provides a snapshot of the average funding and average age for the different Blockchain Technology categories and how they compare with one another.

• Heavyweights: These categories are comprised of companies that have reached maturity with significant financing.
• Established: These categories are comprised of companies that have reached maturity with less financing.
• Disruptors: These categories are comprised of companies that are less mature with significant financing.
• Pioneers: These categories are comprised of companies that are less mature with earlier stages of financing.

The definitions of the Blockchain Technology categories are as follows

Bitcoin Big Data: Companies that develop tools to review, parse, and analyze activity on the public ledger to increase transparency. Examples include monitoring wallets, advanced search filtering, and trend analysis.

Bitcoin Exchanges: Companies that allow users to buy and sell crypto-currencies, provide market analytics, and allow for the implementation of sophisticated trading strategies. Examples include simple consumer-oriented solutions, marketplaces to match buyers and sellers, and broker/dealers that make their own market and trade on their own inventory.

Bitcoin Financial Services: Companies that provide typical banking services using bitcoin technology. Examples include offering financial investment advice on how to manage your portfolio of crypto-currencies, providing remittance payments, and providing loans denominated in bitcoin.

Bitcoin Gambling: Companies that offer gambling opportunities using bitcoin. Examples include online casinos, and white-label game developers.

Bitcoin Infrastructure: Companies that are building the functionality that supports the continued development and expansion of the bitcoin ecosystem. Examples includes organizations responsible for maintaining the open-source code, offering white-label solutions for common bitcoin functions (such as wallets or exchanges), and the physical-world bitcoin Automated Teller Machines (ATMs).

Bitcoin Mining: Companies that develop and operate the computer hardware associated with processing bitcoin transactions (known as “mining”). Examples include the production of bespoke ASIC computers, large scale mining rig operators, and cloud mining pool software.

Bitcoin News and Data Services: Companies that provide news and data around the bitcoin ecosystem. Examples include organizations that offer up-to-date pricing information, original content, and aggregated sources of bitcoin-related news.

Bitcoin Payments: Companies that enable merchants and consumers to pay for real world goods and services using bitcoin as the medium of exchange. Examples include mobile payments via apps, Point-of-Sale terminals pre-built with bitcoin options, and developers of enterprise-level solutions.

Bitcoin Services: Bitcoin services include companies that offer typical business services (such as consulting, security, etc.), but with a bitcoin focus. Examples include recruiting, regulatory compliance, and technical implementation.

Bitcoin Trust and Verification Services: Companies that help verify a bitcoin user’s identity for regulatory purposes. Examples include identity verification for anti-fraud, anti-money laundering, and anti-terror financing laws.

Bitcoin Wallets: Companies that offer consumers a place to securely store their bitcoins. Examples include cold storage solutions, multi-step authentication, and insuring the deposits.

Blockchain Innovations: Companies that are working on blockchain distributed ledger technologies. Examples include increased settlement speed for financial transactions between banks, smart self-enforcing contracts, and cross-blockchain interoperability.

We are currently tracking 897 Blockchain Technology companies in 12 categories across 73 countries, with a total of $1.9 Billion in funding. Click here to learn more about the full Blockchain Technology report and database.