Venture capital funding into cryptocurrency projects shot up in the first quarter of 2024, spurred by resurgent bitcoin prices, favourable regulatory progress and the approval of spt-bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the US.
According to data published by Pitchbook, a total of 518 deals with a combined deal value of $2.4 billion was closed in the quarter, representing a 40.3% increase in invested capital and 44.7% increase in deal volume from the previous quarter.
Median valuations were $21.8 million for pre-seed/seed deals; $72 million for early-stage deals; and $51.1 million for late-stage deals.
Notably, these valuations were significantly higher than the 2023 average, particularly in the early-stage segment, where valuations increased over 148%. Late-stage deals were less valuable, increasing just 7.6$%.
“These numbers indicate that investment rounds have become highly competitive, especially at the early stages,” said Pithcbook. “This is compounded by the fact that early-stage deals are earning higher valuations than late-stage deals, but the sample set is relatively small, so we will see if this trend holds in the coming quarters.”
“With positive investor sentiment returning to crypto and barring any major market downturns, we expect the volume and pace of investments to continue increasing throughout the year,” Pitchbook added.
Key early-stage deals in the period included:
- $106 million into decentralised cloud platform Together AI (Salesforce Ventures)
- $100 million into security platform EigenLayer (Andreessen Horowitz)
- $80 million into social content platform Freechat (undisclosed)
- $60 million into crypto financial services platform Figure Markets (Faction, Jump Crypto, Pantera Capital)
Key seed/pre-seed deals in the period included:
- $35 million into Layer-1 network Zero Gravity (Hack VC)
- $27 million into Layer-1 network Avail (Dragonfly, Founders Fund)
- $20,5 million into decentralised finance platform Ethena (Arthur Hayes, Dragonfly)
- $14 million into metaverse and gaming platform Elixir Games (undisclosed investor)