Blockchain startups have raised US $ 1,800 million this year

Blockchain companies raised US $ 1,800 million through 343 agreements during the first half of 2018, a new record of venture capital investment in the sector that highlights the growing demand of venture capital companies, according to a new report of the firm Bylier Outlier Ventures.

The trend has been driven largely by the increase in VC "mega rounds" of more than US $ 100 million. These include Bitmain's Series B round of $ 400 million in June that valued the company at a price of $ 12 billion. Bitmain plans to request an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong in September.

Circle, a mobile payment and cryptocurrency company, raised US $ 110 million in May, with a valuation of almost US $ 3 billion. Circle acquired the popular Poloniex cryptocurrency trading platform in February for reportedly US $ 400 million.

Another key trend this year is the increase in mergers and acquisitions (M & A) activity. The US cryptocurrency trading company Coinbase has been among the most active, acquiring seven companies this year so far, namely Memo.ai, Cipher Browser, Earn.com, Paradex, Venovate, Digital Wealth and Keystone Capital, according to Crunchbase.

Other major mergers and acquisitions agreements during the first half of 2018 include the acquisition of BitTorrent for $ 126 million last month, and the acquisition by Binance of the Trust Wallet mobile cryptocurrency wallet.

The report also points to the increase in the exchanges of decentralized cryptocurrencies. Idex, Bancor and ForkDelta, the three main decentralized exchanges for Ethereum ERC20 tokens, collectively own 91% of the market, but there are also smaller ones such as Kyber, Airswap and Radar Relay, which recently raised an A Series of US $ 10 million.

One of the main attractions of decentralized exchanges is that they do not retain funds, positions or customer information, and only serve as a layer of correspondence and routing for commercial orders.

Meanwhile, a growing number of corporations enter the cryptocurrency game: the Japanese messaging application Line launched its Exchange BitBox in July, the popular stock trading application Robinhood integrated tokens in its offers earlier this year, and the CEO of Nasdaq, Adena Friedman, has indicated interest in listing tokens in that bag.

Another emerging trend is stable currencies, which allow investors to withhold and transfer dollars, euros and other sovereign currencies through wallets without the need for a bank intermediary.

Currently, there are more than ten implementations of stable currencies based on blockchain in real time, where Tether leads the market with a current capitalization of US $ 2.7 billion.

Circle is working on USD Coin, a stable currency that will connect to Poloniex, and IBM and Stronghold launched a USD-linked crypto currency called Stronghold USD in the Stellar block chain last month.