ANALYSIS: Crypto M&A and investment activity are on the rise

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M&A and investment data from 2021 shows an increase in transactions involving entities with a connection to cryptocurrency, reflecting both record levels of transaction activity this year and the broader trend of a growing number of companies taking an interest in cryptocurrencies and cryptoassets.

Since the start of the year, 577 transactions involving at least one party with the crypto included in its entity description have been announced and have either been closed or are currently on hold. This is the highest total for such deals since they started to appear at a noticeable level around 2017. The total value of these deals is $ 25.5 billion, also a record high. $ 14.7 billion of that volume consists of venture capital investments, up from a total of $ 3.2 billion in 2020.

Entity descriptions are compiled by Bloomberg based on company filings, company websites and registry information. Our search for pending and completed agreements involving parties with the term crypto appearing in their entity descriptions captured mentions of terms that include the prefix, such as cryptocurrency and crypto assets.

Because more and more entities are getting involved in the crypto world, the transactions captured by our search criteria are not limited to companies that primarily focus on crypto; they also include transactions involving entities that you might not consider to be crypto firms per se, but which have a crypto connection. (At the same time, an agreement involving a party that has some connection to crypto but does not explicitly have crypto in their entity description might not have been captured by our research.) For example, the most important of These deals announced in 2021 was the $ 3.4 billion minority investment in Robinhood Markets Inc. by a consortium led by Ribbit Management Co LLC, captured by our research due to Robinhoods cryptocurrency offerings.

$ 12.6 billion of crypto trading volume this year involved technology sector targets, and $ 7.6 billion involved financial sector targets. Both are small fractions of the total mergers and acquisitions in these industries, which have each recorded over half a trillion deals each so far in this boom year.

Bloomberg Law subscribers can find related content on our M&A Deal Analytics resource.

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