Crypto VC investments rise 26% YoY amid market fluctuations in 2024

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Crypto venture capital investments grew 26.1% in 2024 compared to the previous year, with 1,535 projects publicly disclosed, according to a report by Wu Blockchain citing RootData statistics.

The report highlighted a total of 102 publicly disclosed crypto VC investment projects in December, reflecting a 7.4% month-on-month (MoM) increase from 95 projects in November. However, this marked a 6.4% year-on-year (YoY) decrease compared to 109 projects in December 2023.

Total funding for December reached $740 million, a 60.9% MoM increase from $460 million in November but an 18.7% YoY decline from $910 million in December 2023.

For the full year, disclosed funding amounted to $9.33 billion — slightly surpassing 2023’s $9.28 billion by 0.5%.

Sector breakdown

Sector-wise, DeFi led with 24.4% of total projects, followed by NFT/GameFi at 15.1%, Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions at 11%, and artificial intelligence (AI) projects at 9.6%.

Centralized finance (CeFi) made up 5.7%, with real-world assets (RWA) and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) projects accounting for 8.8%. Tools and wallet infrastructure represented 7.3% of the total.

Among the largest funding rounds of 2024, Stripe’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge in October stood out as the largest in the crypto industry.

Australian crypto mining firm Iris Energy raised $413.4 million through stock issuance during the first half of the year, while Avalanche secured $250 million in December through a token sale led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly, and ParaFi Capital.

Other deals

Monad Labs raised $225 million in April to develop an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, and Blockstream secured $210 million in October to expand its Layer 2 technologies.

Meanwhile, Robinhood announced plans to acquire crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million, with completion expected in the first half of 2025.

Other notable deals included Bitfarms’ $175 million acquisition of Stronghold Digital, CleanSpark’s $155 million merger with GRIID Infrastructure, and Hut 8’s $150 million strategic investment to develop AI infrastructure.

Additionally, the decentralized social protocol Farcaster raised $150 million in May, pushing its valuation to $1 billion.