PitchBook News - Crypto bosses rise amid wreckage

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The Weekend Pitch

June 26, 2022

Presented by Deloitte

(Tom Williams/Getty Images)

You need to squint hard to see a silver lining in the crypto crash.

Nearly $2 trillion, or two-thirds of the sector's value, has disappeared. Layoffs and hiring freezes are hitting young companies. And a deadly cocktail of too much leverage and too little liquidity continues to punish companies and funds that wrongly assumed the worst could not happen.

Yet where there's crisis, there's opportunity.

I'm James Thorne, and this is the Weekend Pitch. You can reach me at james.thorne@pitchbook.com or on Twitter @jamescthorne.

Billionaire crypto boss Sam Bankman-Fried has emerged as the man of the moment, using his companies to backstop other players with hundreds of millions in credit. Other executives also rightly see ripe opportunities to consolidate power and gain ground on competitors.

But Bankman-Fried's exceptional actions have sparked a debate: Is he a white knight? A robber baron? Or something in between?

Quote/Unquote

(Tim Grist Photography/Getty Images)

"When other asset classes like property have a dip, nobody ever asks 'Should we invest in property again?'—you just go ahead and find the right things to invest in. I think that same logic applies to the venture ecosystem; it's about finding the right sort of companies to invest in, that will drive the growth that we need now."

—Sam Gyimah, Lakestar venture partner and former UK government minister for science, innovation and higher education, on whether more LPs should go after the UK's private sector capital owing to the country's current lack of growth funding for tech companies.

Deal flow

Many investors are taking a close look at real assets as the dual impact of inflation and rising interest rates is felt around the world. North American core infrastructure assets drew strong interest in Q1, likely due to a policy landscape that has helped prime some infrastructure investments for success.

Meanwhile, oil and gas fundraising represented less than 2% of real assets fundraising since the beginning of last year, but that is expected to change with the impact of the current macroeconomic tailwinds.

Learn more in our latest Global Real Assets Report.

Did you know ...

(AlisaRut/Getty Images)

… That private investment firms have poured capital into the elder and disabled care industry in recent years as the US population age 65 and older rapidly grows.

Over the past five years, the top 10 private investment firms in the sector have completed 140 deals, according to PitchBook data.

Check out our list of the top 10 PE investors in the elder and disabled care sector.

Datapoints

With falling growth stocks, a recent wave of layoff announcements and central banks scrambling to tame inflation, the tailwinds once benefiting venture capital funds appear to have reversed.

Last year, venture fundraising hit a record $242.1 billion globally. Now, a return to Earth seems in the cards, with anecdotal accounts suggesting VCs are tightening their belts as tech firms commence hiring freezes and layoffs and overall sentiment on growth companies shifts.

Recommended reads

As fashion design and trendspotting become increasingly centralized and data-reliant, much of the clothing ending up in stores is looking eerily familiar. [The Atlantic]

In the pandemic's early days, government-backed public health apps acquired millions of users—a ready-made audience that developers are now eager to tap. [Wired]

One writer's thoughts on the private equity firms buying companies they already own. [Financial Times]

Nuclear power is poised for a comeback. But after decades of steering clear of reactors, are there any experts left that know how to build them? [The Wall Street Journal]

As inflation rates hit multidecade highs across the globe, here's a look at interest rate hikes versus inflation rate by country. [Visual Capitalist]

Gig, freelance and contract workers are taking the brunt of the transition to an on-demand economy determined to create agile workforces. [Harvard Business Review]

This edition of The Weekend Pitch was written by James Thorne and Ryan Prete. It was edited by Chris Noble and Sam Steele.

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PitchBook News - Crypto bosses rise amid wreckage

Quote/Unquote

Deal flow

Did you know ...

Datapoints

Recommended reads

Older messages

VC returns snap back to reality

Did VC fly too close to the sun?

Investors home in on real assets

NFT startups bank funds

Agtech blooms with near-record funding

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