Crypto venture capital investments saw a significant increase of 26.1% in 2024 compared to the previous year, with a total of 1,535 projects publicly disclosed, according to a report by Wu Blockchain citing RootData statistics.
The report revealed that there were 102 publicly disclosed crypto VC investment projects in December, showing a 7.4% month-on-month (MoM) growth from 95 projects in November. However, this represented a 6.4% year-on-year (YoY) decline compared to 109 projects in December 2023.
Total funding for December reached $740 million, marking a substantial 60.9% MoM increase from $460 million in November but an 18.7% YoY decrease from $910 million in December 2023.
For the entire year, disclosed funding amounted to $9.33 billion, slightly surpassing the previous year’s total of $9.28 billion by 0.5%.
Sector Breakdown
Breaking down the sectors, DeFi led the way 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) accounted for 5.7%, while real-world assets (RWA) and decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) projects made up 8.8%. Tools and wallet infrastructure represented 7.3% of the total.
Among the significant 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 in 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.
Robinhood also announced plans to acquire crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million, with completion expected in the first half of 2025.
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 in AI infrastructure.
Furthermore, the decentralized social protocol Farcaster raised $150 million in May, pushing its valuation to $1 billion.
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