Crypto fundraising increased by nearly 50% over the year from March 2025 to March 2026, despite a 46% drop in the number of deals, as VCs focused their bets on late-stage and strategic mega-rounds.
An overview of Messari’s crypto fundraising, shared on Sunday by the company’s CEO Eric Turner, shows that the average volume of transactions in the last 12 months has increased to $34 million, which is a 272% increase from a year ago. This is despite the fact that the number of active investors decreased by 34.5% and reached 3225 people.
“Capital concentration is heavily skewed by late-stage and strategic mega-rounds,” Messari said, noting that in February, just three fundraising events contributed 44% of the $795 million raised over the past month.
This includes Tether’s $200 million investment in online marketplace Whop; raised $75 million for sports-focused peer-to-peer prediction marketplace Novig in a Series B funding round led by Pantera Capital; and ARQ, a Latin American fintech app focused on stablecoins, secured $70 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital on Wednesday.
This figure represents $795 million, a 65.3% drop from the previous 30 days.
Outside of Dragonfly Capital, no major VCs have closed new funding rounds recently, Turner noted, adding that “the industry needs new capital.”
Meanwhile, Coinbase Ventures, QUBIC Labs and Somnia were the most active crypto investors in the past three months, Messari data shows.
Crypto funding near 2021-2022 levels
Monthly crypto fundraising has declined significantly since its peak in November 2021 and May 2022, when funding consistently reached $4 billion per month.
Since then, it has reached 4 billion dollars only three times. Some investors have begun to focus on the AI and high-performance computing sectors.
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While most crypto fundraising has focused on late-stage activity, Messari noted that early-stage fundraising “remains high-volume but fragmented.”
Messari noted that Thursday’s $1.5 million interstate funding round had more than 15 participants, ranging from companies like Bloccelerate VC to individual angel investors like Sergey Gorbunov.
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