Messari and Dove Metrics’ new crypto fundraising report has thrown up some interesting results. The report by the provider of market intelligence products and the crypto fundraising database was released on 2 August 2022.
The report shows that the crypto industry has already raised $30.3 billion in funds, across 1,199 H1 funding rounds, so far in 2022. While there were only 1,313 crypto funding rounds, amassing a cumulative capital of $30.2 billion, in 2021 as a whole.
Why is this interesting?
Last year, the crypto market was at its bullish best. Remember how close Bitcoin (BTC) came to the $69,000 mark in November 2021? It wasn’t so surprising that crypto firms were able to raise funds then, when everyone was relatively optimistic.
But the ability of the firms to raise this amount of capital ($30.3 billion) in the first half of 2022 alone, despite the market slump and bearish headwinds, surely is.
What are the funding trends so far?
The 2022 H1 saw VCs going long on Centralized Finance (CeFi), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) projects. Heavy investment volumes were also recorded in the crypto infrastructure space—an area that primarily deals in security and exploits prevention.
While DeFi and NFT optimism was expected, the revelation that almost one-third or $10.3 billion in funds were directed towards CeFi projects is surprising. Within the CeFi vertical, instances of early-stage funding clearly surpassed Series-A and Late Stage deals.
DeFi looked strong despite being a nascent space, with the firms concerned being able to raise $1.8 billion across 195 rounds.
Web 3.0 and NFT-based fundraising weren’t far away either. Firms from these spaces raised almost $8.6 billion across 530 rounds. The gaming NFT space garnered attention, too. Players managed to raise four times the capital accrued by any other NFT verticals.
Read the full report here.
