Bitwise Series B — and What’s Ahead
San Francisco • June 15, 2021
Today, we’re announcing a new milestone for our firm: a $70M Series B, valuing the company at over $500M.
In 2017—which feels like approximately one hundred years ago—Hong Kim and I started Bitwise in a small, whiteboard-covered living room in San Francisco.
People thought we (and crypto) were crazy. You may have, too. Indeed, it’s been a wild ride.
As of 2021, Bitwise has grown into the largest crypto index fund manager in the world, managing well over $1,000,000,000.00 for clients and serving as the conduit that thousands of investors trust to access and navigate this rapidly changing new asset class.
Today, we’re announcing a new milestone for our firm: a $70M Series B, valuing the company at over $500M.
It’s a proud moment for all 30 of us on the growing Bitwise team.
I want to share our thinking on the raise with all of you—our community, supporters and partners—and talk about our view on the future and the role we strive to play.
First, a bit on the round.
Co-leading are two of the best investors in Silicon Valley, Elad Gil and Avichal Garg, the latter via Electric Capital. Elad and Avichal have helped build dozens of iconic companies. They understand crypto deeply, and they believe in what we’re building. They’re incredible partners.
Joining them are some new backers for Bitwise, including Henry Kravis, Stanley Druckenmiller, Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC, Daniel Och’s Willoughby Capital, Matt Heiman & Paul Eisenstein’s Vetamer Capital, Bridgewater CEO David McCormick, D1 CIO Daniel Sundheim, former U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh, Blackstone executive Nadeem Meghji, former Chairman of Citi Private Bank Tracey Brophy Warson, Facebook executive Fidji Simo, Google X CFO Helen Riley, Coinbase Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Compound Labs Founder Robert Leshner, and several others (full list in the release here). Existing Bitwise backers including Highland Capital, Khosla Ventures, Blockchain Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Alison Davis, Adam Nash, and Naval Ravikant participated as well.
Bitwise is profitable. So while we have plans for the $70M, the main goal for the round was getting the right people involved—strategic backers who can lend expertise and who believe in what we’re doing. I’m very proud of the group we’ve assembled.
Looking to the Future
Bitwise has a specific view of the future. We envision a future—five, ten years from now—where the vast majority of investors in America own crypto because of the powerful things it can do to help them protect and grow their capital and savings. A 1-10% allocation for most investors, I’d guess.
We can’t imagine, though, that this future will involve most Americans day trading crypto or managing a self-directed portfolio of hand-picked coins. Sure, that will be true for some, but not most—think of your own family and friends.
Rather, for the vast majority of Americans to participate in the opportunities in the space over the long run, crypto will need to be something they can access and monitor through the same financial advisors, retirement accounts or brokerage accounts they trust for the other 90% of their investments.
Bitwise is focused on making that possible.
Today, we serve over 200 financial advisory firms, 20 institutional managers, and tens of thousands of busy individuals through products that fit into the systems and workflows they use for the rest of the investment universe. We provide education and client service to help investors understand this rapidly changing space. And we have a suite of products that are accessible to everyone and suit a long-term mindset.
With this $70M, we plan to double down and do more, faster.
We’re going to double our team this year, expand the product suite to provide access to a broader range of opportunities, invest in our community and industry regulatory efforts, and look around the corner at how we can stay ahead of the curve for clients.
We’re incredibly excited for the path ahead at Bitwise. Public blockchains are changing the world, and we can’t imagine anything more meaningful than helping ensure that everyone can come along for the ride.
Thank you as always for your support and friendship.
Onward and upward,
Hunter, Hong & the Bitwise team
About Bitwise
Based in San Francisco, Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing crypto asset managers, offering both index and active strategies across a wide array of investment vehicles. The firm is known for creating the world’s largest crypto index fund (OTCQX: BITW), a suite of crypto-focused equity and futures ETFs, and investment products that span Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and NFTs. Bitwise focuses on partnering with financial advisors and investment professionals to provide quality education and research. The team at Bitwise combines expertise in technology with decades of experience in traditional asset management and indexing, coming from firms including BlackRock, Blackstone, Meta, and Google, as well as the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Bitwise is backed by leading institutional investors and asset management executives, and has been profiled in Institutional Investor, CNBC, Barron’s, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal.
