The global geography of investment in emerging technologies: the case of blockchain firms

Abstract

Scholars have long been interested in where new technologies and industries emerge. This regional graphic examines the emergence of one such technology: blockchain. We developed a global database of blockchain firms, as well as capturing investment rounds at the firm level, using Crunchbase, a well-accepted source of information on technology firms. We geocoded the dataset and created original network data at the city-region level to capture investment interactions. We find that blockchain firms are located in cities around the world. However, firms receiving investments are concentrated in a small number of global city-regions, with Silicon Valley, New York, Singapore, London, and Beijing accounting for half of all investments. Moreover, there appear to be supra-regional networks, suggesting that new technology firms continue to concentrate in a handful of interconnected world cities.