Crypto VC investments rise 25% YoY amid market fluctuations in Last year 

v 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 Block chain citing Root Data statistics.

v 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 Nov. However, this marked a 6.4% year-on-year (YoY) decrease compared to 109 projects in past year 2023.

v Total funding for December reached $743 million, a 60.9% MoM increase from $460 million in Nov but an 18.7% YoY decline from $910 million in past  2023.

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

            

Sector breakdown

v 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%.

v 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.

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

v 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

v 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.

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

v 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.

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