Bitcoin DeFi Presents a Large Opportunity
Weekly Recap
Funding fell 27% from $282 million last week to $206 million this week across 34 deals. Triple-digit funding seems to be the new normal, as there has been a notable uptick in the private market in recent weeks. Despite the overall increase in activity, there has been a lack of CeFi-related projects in recent weeks, with just one deal in each of the last two weeks. Agora was the singular CeFi deal this week, which raised $12 million in a seed round led by DragonFly Capital. Agora’s first product is a fully collateralized and freely tradable stablecoin. Agora was co-founded by Nick VanEck (son of VanEck CEO), and Agora’s reserve fund will be managed by VanEck itself.
As private market activity is picking up, many companies are looking to raise large sums for new crypto funds. Over the past week, there have been reports of Paradigm looking to raise $750 million, Galaxy Digital and Hack VC each raising $100 million, and Hivemind Capital looking for $50 million. Additionally, Alliance raised $10 million from both Brevan Howard and Galaxy Digital and is seeking to raise an additional $80 million. The market is still far off from 2021 and 2022 peaks, but it is beginning to accelerate in that direction.
Funding by Category
Funding by Deal Stage
...Reports you may have missed
WEEKLY RECAP Weekly funding fell by 34% from $126 million to $83 million, while deal count rose approximately 22% from 18 to 22. Infrastructure was the leading category, totaling $51 million across nine deals and comprising 61% of total funding. CeFi logged its second consecutive week of two deals, including Caliza’s $8.5 million investment round supporting its mission to provide cross-border remittances leveraging stablecoins. Web3 and Gaming deal flow has...
WEEKLY RECAP In the final week of Q2, crypto funding bounced back, rising 64% from $78 million to $128 million, while deal count rose modestly from 18 to 20. The funding total was dominated by Infrastructure, which comprised 88% of the total and also made up 55% of the total deal count. CeFi broke its streak of two weeks with no deal flow with a singular Series A round completed...
WEEKLY RECAP Private funding was suppressed as we enter the summer season, with total funding dropping 43% week-over-week to $66 million and deal count decreasing 52% to 15 deals. Infrastructure still took the top spot from a funding perspective, totaling $31 million across three deals, including Sonic, our Deal of the Week. DeFi tallied the most deals (6) and had the second most funding across categories ($24m). CeFi had its...