About a year ago I briefly explored the PR and branding challenges of Bitcoin, a topic that has been independently discussed by others.

Over the past 6 months there has been a visible trend in the overall “Bitcoin” space to rebrand or not use the term “Bitcoin” on corporate material. This has been done for a variety of reasons.

Some startups simply are no longer touching or interfacing with bitcoins or the Bitcoin network. Others do not want to be affiliated with the term preferring the alternative “Blockchain” as a catch-all euphemism.

For instance, below are 10 companies which raised their Series A (and sometimes more) and were originally affiliated with “Bitcoin” in some manner but are no longer publicly positioning themselves as such:

Abra ($14 million): originally launched as a “rebittance” company, still claims to use the Bitcoin network but the word Bitcoin does not appear on its homepage

BitGold ($5.3 million): pivoted from Bitcoin last December

Bitreserve ($14.6 million): rebranded as Uphold and now vocally moving away from Bitcoin

ChangeTip ($4.25 million): removed the word Bitcoin from its frontpage, now focused on USD-denominated tips

Chain ($43.7 million): after closing its recent B round, remarketed from Bitcoin-only and removed the word Bitcoin from its frontpage except in the headlines of past news articles

Circle ($76 million): rebranded after receiving a Bitlicense; neither its frontpage nor its new 60 second ad use the word Bitcoin

Cryex ($10 million): the word Bitcoin does not appear on its frontpage

Mirror, formerly Vaurum ($12.8 million): the word Bitcoin does not appear on its frontpage (but does on some older blog posts)

Peernova ($19 million): originally a Bitcoin mining company that is no longer affiliated with Bitcoin at all

Vogogo ($21 million): the word Bitcoin does not appear on its frontpage

A few others who have done marketing changes (some more substantive than others):

BTC China ($5 million): still focused on its virtual currency exchange renamed itself as BTCC to move further abroad into the international marketplace

itBit ($28.25 million): in addition to running its virtual currency exchange, they also launched the Bankchain initiative this past summer

DAH: originally planned on using the Bitcoin blockchain but broadened its scope during the summer after acquiring Hyperledger; the word Bitcoin does not appear on its homepage although it still uses the network for product launches (like Pivit)

Symbiont: originally used the Counterparty platform and the Bitcoin network as part of its financial service, but has now built a permission-based system

Align Commerce, Serica and many others do not use the word Bitcoin on their homepages yet still use the Bitcoin network for some lines of business

Coindesk renamed their quarterly report: “State of Bitcoin and Blockchain”

Inside Bitcoins (the conference circuit) added “with Blockchain Agenda” prominently at the top of their homepage

What about venture capital itself?

As visualized in the chart above, Bitcoin-related investments have declined the past two quarters.

However, the chart is not fully accurate as CBI includes 21inc funding as “one” round in Q1 2015. According to Nathaniel Popper, 21inc did not raise its war chest in one round but rather over the course of 3 rounds. So it is likely that Q1 2015 probably was altogether around $175 million as the other ~$60 million were raised in 2013 and 2014. Similarly Q3 2015 should be less as Chain.com is no longer a Bitcoin-specific company.

What about other changes in the VC world?

Crypto Currency Partners: renamed itself Blockchain Capital

Boost VC: while the word Bitcoin does appear on its homepage, in his most recent writeup of its portfolio, Adam Draper does not use the word Bitcoin but instead uses “block chain” to describe his investments

Pantera: while it remains publicly committed to Bitcoin, based on its most recent newsletter the team likely views the word “blockchain” as more palatable to investors and LPs.

For instance, the year-over-year comparison of word frequency between two Pantera Capital newsletters:

September 2014: bitcoin 77, blockchain 4

September 2015: bitcoin 38, blockchain 63

DCG: launched its website during the summer, prominently display the word “blockchain technology” instead of Bitcoin, despite the fact that nearly all of its portfolio is Bitcoin-reliant or Bitcoin-specific.

In fact it appears that the trend by some VC-backed Bitcoin-heavy portfolio’s adopting the term “blockchain” is a marketing gimmick as neither DCG, Pantera nor Boost have purposefully invested in non-Bitcoin blockchain companies. In fact, individuals such as Barry Silbert (founder of DCG) are outspoken in their dismissal of non-Bitcoin blockchains.

What are some reasons for the decline shown in the CBI numbers?

Part of it has to do with the fact that consumer-facing Bitcoin companies have found muted traction, if any at all. For instance, BitPay (which raised $32.5 million) recently laid off most of its staff, liquidated a large portion of its bitcoin holdings, raised its fees in order to stay afloat and did a (non-pivot) pivot towards catering to other enterprises. This looks bad for other Bitcoin-branded companies looking to try and raise funds for consumer-facing products.

Another reason is that some of the buzz and froth simmered down with the price of bitcoin itself. It seems common parlance to hear people at conferences say “the price of bitcoin doesn’t matter” but that is very untrue for fundraising. If prices were on a tear into orbit or were managing some stability higher than it was 2 years ago, it’d be easier for entrepreneurs to convince new investors (not just the same 4-5 funds) to deploy new capital in Bitcoin-specific products. Maybe Gemini will change that?

So where has some capital been deployed instead?

Into that amorphous catch-all term: “blockchain.”

There are just over a dozen “blockchain” / distributed ledger startups collectively trying to raise $200 million at over a $1 billion valuation.

And incidentally, there are a couple companies in each of the VC portfolio’s above that have now built non-Bitcoin blockchains or ledgers.

Some of them are currently raising while others recently closed funding rounds.

This includes: Symbiont, Chain, Peernova, Ripple, Eris, Setl, Credits, Tradeblock, itBit, Tembusu, Clearmatics, MultiChain, BlockStack, DAH, Blockstream (via Liquid) and a few others in stealth that well, are in stealth.

What does being a “blockchain” company mean?

The term “blockchain technology” is basically a catch-all term at this point.

In many cases, when someone at a fintech conference now says they’re interested in “blockchain technology” it typically means they are interested in common elements like public/private key signing, resolutions to double-spending and permission-based multitenancy environments. Bitcoin, as described by Gwern Branwen, was not the creator of those elements.

What will next year look like? Will there be a new term that is co-opted? Or are we stuck using a word that never appeared in the original Satoshi white paper (it had a demarcated space between “block chain”) and has now become an umbrella term for many different neat ideas?

See also: Needing a token to operate a distributed ledger is a red herring and also A blockchain with emphasis on the “a”

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