PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), revealed in its latest report that Asia and Europe have become a hub “for a majority of mergers and acquisitions and fundraising deals concerning cryptocurrencies.” The report was released on Sept 12th at CoinDesk Invest: Asia Event.
Asia and Europe took over the position of the United States of America from “its dominant position in the digital assets fundraising activities”.
During Q2 of the current year, 41% of global fundraising activities of blockchain and crypto were in Europe. It’s a sharp increase compared to last year’s statistics where it was only 34%. On the other hand, during Q2 of the current year, 26% of deals were centered in Asia.
A total of 67% “of the total global crypto fundraising deals during quarter 2 of 2019 were made in the Asian and European markets while only 27% deals took off from the American ground.”
The sudden surging prices of Bitcoin has resulted in a growth of global deals from $166 million in Q1 to $250 million in Q2, states the PwC report.
The price of bitcoin is the bellwether for the industry and for the sentiment of investors. As the price of bitcoin has recovered, we see the sentiment has become more positive and have seen more activities in fundraising and M&A activities. Senior manager of PwC’s fintech and crypto team, Lucy Gazmararian
Share of M&A deals increased from 17% to more than 50% between the year 2018 to 2019 in Asia and Europe.
“The investment trend has now shifted towards blockchain infrastructure development or DLT infrastructure.”
Since the first half of 2018, we have seen the investment in the mining sector has been consolidating while healthy activity remains in blockchain, exchanges and trading infrastructure. Senior manager of PwC’s fintech and crypto team, Lucy Gazmararian
The report also reveals that the industry has shown a decline in M&A deals in the crypto-focused mining sector since the onset of 2018.
Except perhaps for crypto mining, we are seeing capital flow to every sector of the crypto industry. In particular, crypto exchanges as well as broader crypto trading and blockchain infrastructure companies. Henri Arslanian, PwC’s fintech and crypto head for Asia