In the third quarter of 2025, venture capital investments in crypto and blockchain businesses totaled $4.65 billion across 415 acquisitions. This was a significant increase for the industry, and these numbers show that capital deployed has gone up by 290% over the last quarter, while the number of deals has gone up by 9%.
Even though activity is still below the highs of the 2021-2022 bull market, the total for the quarter is the second-highest since FTX went bankrupt in late 2022, which caused investor sentiment to drop for a long time.
The rise comes as the market as a whole stabilizes, but analysts say there is no obvious link between the rise in Bitcoin values since early 2023 and the amount of venture capital.
So far this year, through the third quarter of 2025, more money has been invested than in 2023 and 2024, even though there have been fewer deals than in previous years.
Sector Breakdown Due to Rise in Trading and Infrastructure
Investments were highly skewed toward established categories, with trading, exchange, investing, and lending platforms taking in the most money, over $2.1 billion. This area regained its status as the top receiver since there is a lot of demand for financial tools that are compliant and can grow with the changing rules.
There was also a lot of interest in infrastructure projects, such as staking and blockchain access solutions. This shows that people are interested in basic technology.
With the rise of stablecoins, new fields like AI integration and payments gained ground. Tokenization, on the other hand, stood out as a bright spot in the midst of expected legal clarity.
Web3, NFTs, DAOs, metaverses, and gaming, on the other hand, have become less popular than they were during the profile-picture (PFP) NFT boom of prior cycles. However, early-stage bets are still being made in these areas.
The diversified portfolio was filled out by DeFi protocols and payments based on rewards. This showed that the ecosystem was growing and putting utility ahead of speculative excitement.
Notable Deals Drive the Rally
A few big rounds made up almost half of Q3’s total capital. Fintech company Revolut got $1 billion to add more cryptocurrencies to its platform, and exchange Kraken got $500 million to improve its worldwide infrastructure.
Erebor’s $250 million for institutional-grade custody, Treasury’s $146 million in tokenized assets, and Fnality’s $135 million for payment networks.
Mesh Connect’s $130 million in connectivity solutions and ZeroHash’s $104 million in fiat-to-crypto rails were among the other big investments.
These acquisitions show that venture firms are investing in startups that are further along and have established revenue streams. This is because they want to take less risk in a post-FTX world.
U.S. Maintains Grip on Global Activity
The United States received the most capital and deals, accounting for 47% of capital and 40% of deals. The United Kingdom came in second with 28% of capital and 6.8% of deals. Singapore and Hong Kong came in last with 3.8% and 3.6% of deal shares, respectively. The Netherlands had 3.3% of the capital.
A pro-crypto legislative agenda, such as the planned GENIUS Act and possible laws regulating the structure of the crypto market, might make this U.S. lead even bigger. These laws could make monitoring easier and bring in more institutional players.
Moving Toward Later-Stage Maturity
Funding stages showed a preference for later-stage rounds, with 57% of capital allocated to them, compared to 43% for early-stage ventures. There were consistent numbers of deals in the pre-seed stage, but more in subsequent rounds, indicating that the industry is maturing.
The median deal size remained at $4.5 million, while the pre-money valuation rose to a record $36 million, close to the highs of 2021.
Cohorts that started in 2018 raised the most money because they had been around longer. Startups founded in 2024 had the most deals, indicating that new ideas were entering the market.
