Among the top ten blockchain investment institutions in the world, three are from China!

     Technology is becoming more and more important in this era. It is not just a tool or an infrastructure. Technology brings about changes in infrastructure and is bound to reshape business models.

     Bitcoin has attracted worldwide attention due to its sharp rise and fall. Now, its underlying technology, blockchain, is slowly entering the mainstream as the most watched Fintech technology in the United States.

     Major financial institutions around the world are investing heavily in blockchain technology research and participating in blockchain project investments, including Nasdaq, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Morgan Stanley, UBS, HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, BBVA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, etc. The combination of blockchain technology and the infrastructure of banks and other financial institutions will change their payment, transaction, and settlement methods and improve their operational efficiency.

     The development of technology has brought about a golden age for entrepreneurship. Blockchain technology is also exploring its commercial applications, such as registration, property rights confirmation, and intelligent management. According to foreign media reports, the total amount of investment in blockchain-related start-ups has exceeded US$1 billion from 2015 to now.

CoinDesk's Bitcoin Venture Capital Data shows that nearly 200 venture capital firms have invested in Bitcoin companies. Below, we take a look at the following 10 most influential investment firms in the blockchain field.

Andreessen Horowitz

     Andreessen Horowitz is a well-known unicorn investment company abroad. It has invested in unicorns such as Airbnb, Pinterest, Jawbone, etc. Andreessen Horowitz is also the most eye-catching investment company in the Bitcoin ecosystem. It was co-founded by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and Netscape product manager Ben Horowitz.

     Andreessen Horowitz has invested in projects including digital payment company Ripple Labs, Bitcoin trading platform and wallet service provider Coinbase, Bitcoin mining company 21 Inc, virtual currency data service provider TradeBlock, decentralized commodity trading market OpenBazaar, etc. The total investment amount is approximately US$227 million, accounting for about 1/4 of the total investment in Bitcoin and blockchain.

     Among them, Ripple Labs is a digital payment company in San Francisco. The Ripple it developed is an open source, distributed payment protocol that can make financial transactions as convenient as sending and receiving emails, allowing various forms of value (such as legal currency, virtual currency, etc.) to be circulated and converted seamlessly around the world like information.

Coinbase is a digital currency trading and wallet service provider, which received $75 million in Series C financing in January 2015. Prior to this, Coinbase completed the acquisition of Blockr.io, a blockchain information browsing service provider.

IDG

     IDG Capital in China has seen the craze for digital currency in the United States. In terms of investment direction, IDG is more interested in the application of blockchain as a distributed ledger. IDG Capital has participated in the financing of Bitcoin and blockchain projects such as Ripple Labs, Koinify, Coinbase (Bitcoin wallet and exchange), and Circle (Bitcoin bank). There are also three investment projects in China, namely, Bihang, Ruibo Technology founded by Sun Yuchen, a post-90s, and Face-to-Face for cross-border exchange.

     Among them, Koinify's original idea was to establish a decentralized Kickstarter, but because Koinify later encountered financial difficulties and development was hindered, Koinify announced in May this year that it would transform its core business.

Khosla Venture

    Khosla Ventures is located in Menlo Park, USA. It is called a "giant venture capital firm" by TechCrunch. Recently, Khosla raised $400 million for the next batch of seed-stage investments, part of which will be used in the field of Bitcoin and blockchain.

    Khosla's Bitcoin investment list includes 21 Inc, which has received more than $120 million, Bitcoin sidechain technology company Blockstream, blockchain technology expert Chain, and financial service provider BlockScore.

    Among them, Chain is a newly established blockchain company, founded in 2014, which provides API and other infrastructure for financial institutions using blockchain. Chain successfully raised $30 million in September this year, and investors include Nasdaq, Vis, Citi and other giants. In May this year, Nasdaq cooperated with Chain to conduct a trial operation on the use of Bitcoin for private company stock trading.

Boost VC

   Founded in 2013, San Mateo-based Boost VC has been one of the most active investors in the digital currency space. Boost VC once stated that it would invest in 100 Bitcoin companies by 2017. Currently, Align Commerce, BlockCypher, BTCPoint, BitPagos, Reveal, and Mirror are all on its investment list.

Among them, Mirror is a blockchain smart contract startup that aims to improve the liquidity of international markets and democratize the financial system. Currently, Mirror has completed a round A financing of US$8.8 million.

Rain Cloud Ventures

    Located in Palo Alto, U.S., Rain Cloud Ventures is an early-stage venture capital fund founded by Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. It is targeting the next generation of computing technologies such as mobile, sensors, cloud computing and big data, and aims to establish its investment influence in the technology field. So far, the investment list of Rain Cloud Ventures includes BitPay, Blockstream and Ripple Labs, three star companies in the industry.

     In the blockchain field, Yunyu Venture Capital has successively invested in blockchain network service company Blockcypher and another blockchain identity solution ShoCard.

    Among them, BlockCypher is a blockchain network service company co-founded by experienced software veterans Matthieu Riou and Nicholson. At present, BlockCypher has completed a round of seed fund financing of US$3.1 million. BlockCypher aims to reduce the technical barriers to the construction of blockchain applications, promote innovation, and enable developers to easily build, monitor and safely use their applications.

Lightspeed Venture Partners

     Lightspeed Venture Partners was founded in 2000 and is a global venture capital fund focusing on the US, Israel and China markets. Although Lightspeed has slowed down its pace of technology investment in recent years, it is still one of the earliest venture capital institutions involved in the Bitcoin field. Partner Jeremy Liew is one of the biggest fans of blockchain technology. Liew said: "In the next few years, the core opportunities of the Bitcoin ecosystem will be driven by value storage and speculative use cases. Only if these use cases support a higher Bitcoin market value, the distributed ledger Bitcoin 2.0 will have a chance to expand."

    Lightspeed's investment list includes Bitcoin wallet provider blockchain, identity verification service company BlockScore, and digital asset exchange Melotic. Lightspeed also has two investment cases in China, including China's first Bitcoin exchange BTCChina and digital currency media 8btc.

Among them, BlockScore is an identity verification service company based on blockchain technology, which received $2 million in angel investment in June 2014. It is positioned in vertical markets such as payment, prepaid cards, banks, shopping malls, and Bitcoin, helping these fields reduce burdens and protect consumer and corporate identities from theft and other forms of fraud.

RRE Ventures

RRE Ventures has raised seven funds totaling more than $1.5 billion since its founding in 1994. It is a venture capital firm focused on fast-growing markets. RRE began investing in the digital currency sector in 2013, and its investment list includes Bitcoin exchange itBit, Bitcoin mining company 21 Inc, merchant payment processor BitPay, hardware wallet provider Case, API expert Gem and Ripple Labs.

RRE also has two investments in the blockchain field, namely blockchain smart contract startup Mirror and blockchain technology company Chain.

Kuala Innovations

     Kuala Innovations, registered in Guernsey, UK, bought 3.64% of Factom's shares for $1 per share in October 2015, totaling $400,000. Factom is currently valued at $11 million.

     Factom is a company that operates a blockchain accounting project that is considered to have the potential to revolutionize the way companies process and store data. This project has also received widespread attention from all over the world. Factom is committed to building a data layer on the Bitcoin blockchain. It maintains a distributed data layer, performs a merkle tree hash on all data every 10 minutes, and uploads the hash value to the Bitcoin blockchain. In addition, the Factom team is also working with the Honduran government to design a land ownership record system for them.

  Wanxiang Blockchain Fund

     Xiao Feng, vice chairman of Wanxiang Group, has always been a loyal supporter of Bitcoin and blockchain. In September this year, Xiao Feng, together with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and BitShares co-founder Shen Bo, jointly established the "Blockchain Lab" to promote blockchain technology education and invested $500,000 in Ethereum to purchase 416,000 Ethereum native tokens ETH.

     In addition, Wanxiang Group invested 50 million US dollars to establish a blockchain fund to invest in various projects related to blockchain business applications around the world. Chao Deng, executive director of DataYes, a subsidiary of Wanxiang Group, said that as early as two years ago, Wanxiang began researching blockchain technology and was optimistic about its prospects.

  Shubei Investment

     Shubei Investment was initiated and established by the Hangzhou Branch of Zhejiang Tsinghua Yangtze River Delta Research Institute and managed by professional and senior professionals in the blockchain field. It has attracted the participation of professional research institutions such as Zhejiang University Internet Finance Research Institute, Alibaba Research Institute, and Ancun Academy of Sciences. It specializes in investing in application companies in the blockchain field.

    Shubei Investment Fund has a total amount of 600 million yuan, making it the world's largest blockchain investment fund. It has invested 180 million yuan in the blockchain field. Of the total amount, 100 million yuan is an angel fund, which is used to incubate blockchain projects with application prospects and the mining chip industry to improve blockchain security. 500 million yuan is an industrial fund, which is invested in mid- and late-stage blockchain application projects with clear business models.