BLOCKCHAIN WATCH 09/27/2017

Pitchbook’s 3Q 2017 blockchain report gives the following summary of recent events:

  • Regulatory statements in China and the U.S. have yet to temper market enthusiasm for the red-hot cryptocurrency and ICO market.
  • SEC recognition that some tokens are securities and some are not is a sensible approach that will encourage the best ideas to continue in a sandbox, while less-innovative projects will face more scrutiny.
  • VC investment in blockchain companies has remained relatively flat, even as the ICO market has exploded.
  • Only half of valuation step-ups in blockchain companies have outpaced the price increase of bitcoin in the same time period.

Bitcoin mines. Quartz published a cool guide to digital gold. The center of the bitcoin goldrush is China even as the “country’s exchanges have been all but closed by a government crackdown, in a significant challenge to bitcoin’s core premise: That it’s beyond the reach of any government.” Everything you wanted to know about how the bits become coins.