Binance climbs to sixth place in global unicorn ranking

The cryptocurrency exchange Binance, valued at $45 billion, has taken sixth place in the global unicorn ranking “unicorns”, according to the half-year report Global Unicorn Index 2022 from Hurun Research.

The crypto company rose by 15 positions. Six months ago its market capitalization stood at $15 billion.

The top spot in the list remained with Douyin ($200 billion). The TikTok operator’s valuation fell by $150 billion.

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, rose to second place ($125 billion), ahead of Ant Group ($120 billion).

Hurun counted a total of 1,312 private companies valued at more than $1 billion in 48 countries. Their combined value amounts to $4.2 trillion. The top 10 account for 17.6% of the total.

“In the first six months of the year, 369 new “unicorns” were identified — about two per day. Almost a third of them are fintech, SaaS and blockchain. 80% provide services, and only 20% have physical products. 65% sell to enterprises and 35% to consumers,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, Hurun’s chief researcher.

The United States leads with 625 companies in the ranking. In six months their number rose by 138. China followed with 312 unicorns (+11).

India retained third place with 68 unicorns on the list. Outside the country, Indian founders created another 56 unicorns.

Among the cities, the title of “World Capital of Unicorns” remained San Francisco — 176 companies. New York outranked Beijing in the ranking — 120 to 90 startups.

Among the top-10 new faces in the rankings at the start of the year were two blockchain-industry players: Upbit exchange operator Dunamu ($8 billion) and the KuCoin platform ($6.3 billion).

Forbes placed the founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, at the top of the cryptocurrency industry’s billionaires list. The publication put his wealth at $19 billion.

In November 2021, Caijing journalists valued Zhao’s wealth at $90 billion. In January, Bloomberg called it a near figure — $96 billion.

Follow ForkLog’s Bitcoin news on our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, rates and analysis.