2025 H1 encryption financing insights: 37 billion total financing amount shows signs of recovery, top VC still has a huge influence.

Author: Marco Manoppo

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

The first half of 2025 is a turning point for cryptocurrency venture capital. After two years of capital tightening and cautious investors, funds have surged significantly. As of June 30, the total disclosed cryptocurrency financing has exceeded $37 billion, with over 150 tracked transactions covering seed rounds, Series A-C, strategic rounds, and IPOs. Despite regulatory uncertainties and ongoing token price fluctuations, institutional and venture capital confidence in the industry has strongly returned.

Key points:

• The total amount of cryptocurrency financing disclosed in the first half of 2025 exceeded $37 billion, making it one of the most active periods since the bull market of 2021, with over 150 tracked transactions.

• Binance's $2 billion strategic financing and Circle's $1.1 billion IPO, among other large-scale financings, have pushed the average trading size up to $248 million, demonstrating a renewed confidence in mature platforms.

• Most of the funds are shifting from consumer applications and speculative projects into scaling solutions, compliance infrastructure, and cross-chain protocols.

Approximately $700 million has flowed into AI-related crypto projects, indicating that investors view this as the next significant frontier of innovation.

• Top investors such as a16z crypto, Paradigm, Pantera, Galaxy Digital, and Sequoia account for about 40% of the highest valuation rounds. Currently, large funds still have a significant influence on the development direction of the crypto industry.

Overall Financing Overview

Between January and June 2025, crypto and blockchain startups raised approximately $37.3 billion in disclosed funding.

The average transaction size is approximately $248 million, significantly higher than in previous years. Of course, this average is influenced by several rounds of large financing and IPOs, such as Binance's $2 billion strategic financing and Circle's $1.1 billion IPO. The median transaction size is close to $50 million, reflecting that most financing rounds are still within the mid-market range.

This total financing amount makes the first half of 2025 one of the most active periods since the bull market of 2021. Particularly noteworthy is the significant influx of capital into infrastructure and scaling solutions, rather than just consumer application sectors.

Monthly and quarterly trends

The amount of financing varies each month, with March being the strongest. In March alone, driven by large strategic round financing and pre-IPO financing, the estimated financing amount for various companies reached 8 billion dollars.

The total financing amount for January and February was approximately 9.4 billion dollars, while it slightly slowed down in April to about 4.5 billion dollars.

In May and June, financing activities rebounded, exceeding 5 billion dollars, primarily sourced from later-stage transactions and Circle's IPO.

In terms of quarters, the financing amount in the first quarter was close to $17.4 billion, while the second quarter saw an increase of $15.9 billion. Although the first quarter was driven by early-year development momentum and Binance's financing, the financing scope in the second quarter was much broader, with large financings distributed across areas such as scaling infrastructure, custody solutions, and DeFi.

This rhythm indicates that investors made financing decisions early in the year, possibly to lock in valuations before the token price rises further.

Industry Segmentation and Analysis

Analyzing the funding allocation across various industries allows for a clear understanding of which fields investors believe have long-term value:

• DeFi and financial infrastructure attracted the largest share, with funding exceeding 6.2 billion dollars. Institutional DeFi protocols focusing on compliant lending, derivatives, and liquidity provision are particularly popular.

• Layer 1 and Layer 2 scaling solutions have raised approximately $3.3 billion. EigenLayer, LayerZero, and other protocol-focused projects are the biggest beneficiaries, reflecting investors' belief that Ethereum scaling and cross-chain interoperability remain unresolved opportunities.

• Custody, security, and compliance solutions have attracted over $1.2 billion in funding. This also highlights the importance of trustworthy infrastructure in the face of tightening regulatory requirements.

• Stablecoin and payment network financing of approximately 1.5 billion USD indicates ongoing capital support for projects that link fiat currencies with on-chain liquidity.

• AI-Crypto has emerged as a rapidly growing theme, with approximately $700 million invested in projects that integrate large language models, decentralized computing, and token incentives.

• Compared to 2021-2022, funding in the NFT and gaming sectors remains sluggish, totaling around $600 million, which highlights the market's shift from speculative collectibles to applications that focus more on practicality. In short, capital has decisively shifted from purely consumer hype cycles to infrastructure, compliance tracks, and expanded ecosystems.

Financing rounds worth noting

Several rounds of large-scale financing have dominated the headlines and capital flows. Binance's strategic financing of $2 billion in January immediately set the tone for this year's financing market, indicating that even mature exchanges still possess significant investor confidence. Circle's $1.1 billion IPO became the largest public exit case in the first half of the year, confirming that the stablecoin model is viable and capable of generating revenue. At the same time, the financing rounds of Binance and Circle are the second and third largest financing rounds in cryptocurrency history, respectively.

Other notable funding rounds include TON's $400 million strategic financing, Phantom's $150 million Series C financing, and LayerZero's $150 million investment. These financings alone accounted for a quarter of the total financing amount in the first half of the year.

An important dynamic phenomenon: Almost all large financing rounds have attracted participation from top investment firms such as a16z crypto, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, and Pantera Capital. These phenomena convey that mainstream venture capital funds will continue to concentrate equity in industry-leading companies.