Crypto infrastructure firm Blockstream seeks a fresh injection of capital at a valuation that may be below $1 billion, Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. If true, this would put its crypto unicorn status in jeopardy.
Commonly used in the venture capital industry, the term unicorn refers to a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
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In August 2021, Blockstream was valued at $3.2 billion after it raised $210 million in a Series B funding round led by Baillie Gifford and Bitfinex. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised a total of $299 million since its inception in 2014.
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Blockstream CEO Adam Back tweeted that the firm has already received funding, but declined to provide exact figures on how much was raised or what is the company’s current valuation. The fresh cash will be used to expand Blockstream’s capacity for hosting crypto miners, he said.
“We rapidly sold out all of the capacity and have a big backlog of existing and new customers with miners seeking large-scale hosting with us,” Back told Bloomberg.
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“While Bitcoin price and mining profitability are down, hosting rates have risen over the last quarters and our mining services are a rapidly expanding, high-margin enterprise business for us,” he added.
