Venture Funding Drops But Crypto Hedge Funds Get Huge Inflows

Venture funding fell to its lowest level all year at $212M, down over 50% from $503M last week. Total deals also nearly got cut in half, falling from 47 to 22. The largest drops in funding came in the infrastructure and Metaverse/Gaming segments, which were each particularly high last week. Surprisingly, NFT funding increased to its highest level in weeks at $81M. There were four NFT deals, the largest of which being Gary Vaynerchuk’s Veefriends, which raised $50M in a Seed Round. The majority of deals occurred in the early stages, with 63.6% of the deals being Seed Round.

While venture funding was low, crypto investment funds actually had a huge week, with 9 funds raised for a total of $1.98 billion. The largest of these was global macro hedge fund Brevan Howard’s $1 billion raise for its crypto fund – making it the biggest crypto hedge fund raise ever. Brevan Howard’s Digital Asset Multi-Strategy Fund employs a multi-manager and multi-strategy approach, putting capital to work in both venture capital-style plays and liquid crypto tokens. Strategies include quantitative trades and relative-value plays that are implemented by teams of portfolio managers structured in “pods” that feature supporting analysts and engineers. More than 60 staffers run BH Digital’s o...