Series C funding will serve to expand its operations in 2021. The startup stated that it would now be worth about USD 1 billion.
In a third series, C round of funding with venture capital, blockchain intelligence, and Research Company Chainalysis recently raised USD 100 million. Multiple investors and companies, such as Addition, Accel, Benchmark, and Ribbit, participated in the process.
Thanks to this capital injection, Chainalysis will be able to further expand its operations worldwide and double its new hiring of staff. The company made the information public knowledge on its website, but a report from Forbes advanced information on the negotiations.
Chainalysis said that they will open new offices in South Korea and Australia, which will add to the new centers in Tokyo, Japan, and Singapore. The surveillance company is already operating in Washington D.C., New York, London, and Copenhagen.
“Cryptocurrencies are one of the most important technological innovations for the next generation of financial infrastructure. We will always continue to invest in improving our market-leading platform to provide trusted data and workflows around all use cases, including scaling underlying blockchain technology,” stressed the company that stated that it would now be worth about USD 1 billion.
They release the information almost five months after the series B round of funding for the startup took place. In July, Chainalysis had raised USD 49 million from investors Ribbit Capital, Sound Ventures, MUFG, and Sozo.
Chainalysis and the Bitcoin Ecosystem
The company currently has about 200 employees, a figure that they expect to double in the coming months. In May of this year, Chainalysis analyst Daniel Cartolín confirmed that the company had a payroll of 155 employees since it had reduced its workforce by 20% last year.
Chainalysis would have a portfolio of 350 customers in total between the public sector (100) and the private sector (250). Among its main contractors are the US Department of Justice, the FBI, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Department of the Air Force.
There is an increase in the demand for the services that Chainalysis offers due to the market that the company serves, along with the increased regulation on cryptocurrencies worldwide. Other companies, such as Elliptic, CipherTrace, and Coinbase, also offer surveillance services on operations in blockchains, that is, on cryptocurrency users.
The company seeks to leverage the adoption of Bitcoin, as long as users comply with all current regulations and laws. Their objective is to prevent the use of crypto assets for crimes such as money laundering and terrorist financing. In other words, they are trying to ensure “responsible adoption.”
According to a report from Chainalysis, there is no evidence linking Bitcoin to terrorist financing. The company itself has said that there was sensationalism in the handling of the piece of information on the possible use of Bitcoin to support this type of activity.
By Willmen Blanco
