Just how wrong were those 2021 valuations? – TechCrunch

Happy Monday. It’s Independence Day here in the United States, which means that much of TechCrunch is on holiday. But as last week came to a close, several important pieces of data dropped that are worth our consideration. Let’s not let that opportunity pass, day off or not. (Also, this is the last day of our Fourth of July sale, so, you know, feel free to contribute to, ahem, TechCrunch’s financial independence as well!)

The bits of data that came out on Friday included Klarna’s potentially final new valuation, which is settling even lower than we anticipated, and the conclusion of the FTX-BlockFi drama, which we need to unpack because the numbers are a little harder to parse than the headline figures you might have seen over the weekend.

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Let’s compare the figures with 2021 prices, discuss the discrepancies thereof, and then chat through which other companies might be in trouble based on the somewhat shocking math we have ahead of us. Just how far from the mark did some startup pricing get last year? This far:

Klarna and BlockFi as warning shots

As always when discussing negative news items, we’re not here to crow. Instead, we want to parse new data so that we can better understand the state of the market. Covering layoffs, down rounds and the like is not nearly as much fun as covering IPOs. So, here’s to getting back to that when possible.

Regardless, the bad news summarizes as follows: