TVP Reveals 767% Explosion in Early-Stage Bitcoin Startup Funding

On Thursday, Austin's Trammell Venture Partners (TVP), an early-stage Bitcoin venture capital firm, published its third annual report on the cryptocurrency's emerging venture capital landscape, revealing a 767% jump in "Bitcoin-native" pre-seed transactions.

Trammell Venture Partners (TVP), an early-stage Bitcoin venture capital firm based in Austin, Texas, was founded in 2016 and specializes in investing in startups operating in the domains of Bitcoin, Lightning, and Web3.

The firm is focused on investing in the seed stage, and its mission is to support the development of the next generation of Bitcoin-native companies.

On Thursday, TVP published its third annual report on the emerging venture capital landscape of Bitcoin, highlighting a substantial 767% surge in transactions for “Bitcoin-native” startups at the pre-seed stage.

The firm defines “Bitcoin-native” as a startup that is "founded with the first principle that bitcoin is the global monetary asset of the future and Internet-native digital cash." This category includes the majority of TVP's portfolio companies, such as Voltage, a startup concentrating on Lightning Network infrastructure, and Fedi, a company that launched a Bitcoin superapp encompassing chat, money, and numerous social features.

According to TVP's research, by the end of 2024, the number of pre-seed venture transactions for such Bitcoin-native startups had increased sevenfold since 2021. During that same period, from 2021 to 2024, TVP’s analysis indicates that Bitcoin startups collectively raised approximately $1.2 billion.

"Many entrepreneurs across crypto are pivoting to the Bitcoin stack as the long-term place to build their companies," noted Christopher Calicott, managing director at TVP. "It makes complete sense. The objectively most secure, reliable, and decentralized blockchain is the obvious platform of choice," he added.

Bitcoin.com contacted TVP to inquire about the methodology used to arrive at the 767% increase figure, but Calicott responded that the raw data was proprietary to TVP and not yet disclosed.

"We haven't been releasing the raw data from our data set, other than in summary statistics. So, for example, we're not yet disclosing the names of the companies that were funded in 2024 or the full breakdown of the transaction types (e.g., Series A, Series B, etc.). We'll be sharing more of that in future reports," Calicott disclosed.

The report from TVP showcases several other interesting trends in the Bitcoin startup landscape. For instance, total funding in 2024 dropped by 22.1% to $234 million, the lowest capital raised in the 2021-2024 timeframe. However, 2024 saw the total number of startups funded and pre-seed transactions rise by 27.5% and 50%, respectively. Among the various stages, Series A transaction count experienced the largest surge, increasing by 60% in 2024.

Among the various charts compiled by TVP, one that stands out starkly highlights the small size of the Bitcoin-native venture capital investment landscape in comparison to the broader non- BTC crypto ecosystem. Despite Bitcoin's 63% dominance of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, TVP's data indicates that the leading digital asset obtained only a paltry 2.34% of all crypto venture dollars invested. Is the glass only 2.34% full or 97.66% empty? Calicott suggests it's the former.

"As this wave of early-stage companies gains traction, we'll see increasingly large amounts of crypto value accrue to the Bitcoin stack—a core thesis that drives investing at Trammell Venture Partners," Calicott stated.