Mar 14, 2024
Crypto’s Berachain Becomes Unicorn in $69 Million Funding Round
, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- The Berachain blockchain platform is becoming a unicorn in a more than $69 million funding round co-led by Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures, according to people familiar with the matter.
The project, which is raising the money by selling digital tokens, will be valued at $1.5 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. Berachain focuses on decentralized finance, or DeFi, which enables trading, lending and borrowing without the use of traditional intermediaries like banks.
Berachain is one of the first crypto projects to achieve unicorn status — a valuation of at least $1 billion — in the current digital-asset bull run marked by record highs for Bitcoin. The fundraising signals venture capital investors are becoming more interested in crypto companies after deals collapsed last year.
Both Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures declined to comment. Berachain didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Unlike blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana, Berachain has pseudonymous co-founders, including Smokey The Bera and Dev Bear, part of the project’s cartoon-bear theme. The platform is designed to be compatible with Ethereum-based applications and is marketed as a more community-driven blockchain — a Berachain party at an industry conference earlier in March in Denver drew over 1,500 people, according to attendees.
While Bitcoin has scaled all-time highs this year, the DeFi market overall has yet to follow suit. The total value of tokens sent to the DeFi sector stands at about $103 billion, compared with more than $180 billion at the peak in November 2021, based on data from tracker DeFiLlama. A crypto bear market in 2022 and spate of scandals eroded confidence in the DeFi industry.
Berachain has three main tokens, BERA and BGT as well as the Honey stablecoin. A test version of the blockchain was released to the public in January and the project is yet to fully launch. Berachain’s previous investors include Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Robot Ventures and others.
Crypto-sector venture capital deals totaled less than $2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, the lowest in three years and down from a peak of $11.6 billion at the beginning of 2022, according to data compiled by PitchBook.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
