New Research Shows Continued Growth in Bitcoin-Native Startup Activity

New research from venture capital firm Trammell Venture Partners (TVP) highlights continued growth in bitcoin native startup activity, with nearly $1.2 billion raised

output: New research from venture capital firm Trammell Venture Partners (TVP) highlights the continued growth of bitcoin native startup activity, with nearly $1.2 billion raised by early-stage companies between 2021 and 2024.

This startup formation and funding activity comes despite a broader downturn in crypto and tech venture capital markets during 2023 and 2024, particularly at the Pre-Seed stage.

According to the 2024 edition of TVP’s Bitcoin-Native Venture Capital Landscape Research Brief, transaction volume at this stage of the startup lifecycle is up 767% in 2024 compared to 2021, signalling a maturing and sustained venture capital category. In 2024 alone, Pre-Seed transaction counts increased 50% year-over-year, while the overall deal count for Bitcoin-native startups grew by 31.8%.

“One or two years’ data might represent an anomaly, but with four consecutive years of year-over-year growth at the earliest stage of Bitcoin startup formation, the data now confirm a sustained, long-term venture category trend,” said Christopher Calicott, Managing Director at TVP.

TVP defines a Bitcoin-native company as one whose product success is inherently aligned with Bitcoin’s success and which leverages the Bitcoin protocol stack in its core operations.

In terms of resilience, the broader crypto venture capital market experienced a downturn in 2023 and 2024, with total disclosed startup transactions dropping from a peak of $32 billion in 2021 to $11 billion in 2023. However, Bitcoin-specific startups bucked this trend.

As a share of the broader crypto startup activity, which includes startups building in blockchains other than Bitcoin, these investments are becoming increasingly interesting to institutional VC firms. In 2024, there was notable participation in Bitcoin-native startups from Draper Associates, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and Ribbit Capital.

TVP’s report does not include any mining operations or late-stage outlier deals and focuses on early-stage software and infrastructure startups. The data set used in the report includes activity from 2021 through 2024 and aims to offer allocators an analysis of the long-term trends in Bitcoin’s startup ecosystem.

The full report is available for download via TVP’s official website: https://www.tvp.ventures/.