Original Title: H1 Crypto Funding: Key Trends and Insights

Original Author: Marco Manoppo

Original Translation: TechFlow Deep Tide

The first half of 2025 marked a turning point for cryptocurrency venture funding. After two years of capital tightening and investor caution, a significant influx of funds emerged. As of June 30, disclosed cryptocurrency funding totaled over $37 billion, tracking over 150 deals across seed, Series A-C, strategic rounds, and IPOs. Despite regulatory uncertainties and ongoing token price volatility, institutional and venture capital confidence in the industry has seen a strong comeback.

Key Highlights:

• The disclosed cryptocurrency funding in the first half of 2025 surpassed $37 billion, making it one of the most active periods since the 2021 bull market, with over 150 tracked deals.

• Large-scale fundings such as Binance's $20 billion strategic round and Circle's $11 billion IPO have raised the average deal size to $248 million, showcasing renewed market confidence in mature platforms.

• Most funds have shifted from consumer apps and speculative projects to scaling solutions, compliance infrastructure, and cross-chain protocols.

• Approximately $700 million flowed into AI-related crypto projects, indicating investors view this as the next significant frontier of innovation.

• Top investors like a16z crypto, Paradigm, Pantera, Galaxy Digital, and Sequoia hold approximately 40% of the highest valuation rounds, demonstrating that large funds still wield significant influence over the direction of the crypto industry.

Overall Funding Landscape

During the period from January to June 2025, cryptocurrency and blockchain startups raised approximately $37.3 billion in disclosed funding. The average deal size was around $248 million, significantly higher than in previous years. Of course, this average was influenced by several mega-rounds and IPOs, such as Binance's $20 billion strategic funding and Circle's $11 billion IPO. The median deal size was close to $50 million, reflecting that most funding rounds still fall in the mid-market category.

This total funding amount made the first half of 2025 one of the most active periods since the 2021 bull market. Particularly noteworthy is the significant amount of funding that flowed into infrastructure and scaling solutions, rather than just the consumer applications sector.

Monthly and Quarterly Trends

The funding amount varied each month, with March being the strongest. In March alone, driven by large strategic rounds and pre-IPO funding, the total funding estimate for companies reached around $8 billion.

The combined funding amount for January and February was approximately $9.4 billion, while April saw a slight slowdown at around $4.5 billion. May and June saw a rebound in funding activity, both surpassing $5 billion, mainly driven by later-stage deals and Circle's IPO.

Looking at the quarterly breakdown, the funding amount in the first quarter was close to $17.4 billion, with an additional $15.9 billion in the second quarter. While the first quarter saw momentum from the beginning of the year and Binance's funding, the second quarter's funding was more diverse, with large fundings distributed across scalability infrastructure, custody solutions, and DeFi.

This rhythm indicates that investors made funding decisions early in the year, possibly to lock in valuations before further token price increases.

Industry Segmentation and Analysis

Analyzing the fund allocation in various industries can provide a clear view of which sectors investors see as having long-term value:

• DeFi and financial infrastructure attracted the largest share, with funding exceeding $6.2 billion. Institution-focused DeFi protocols that focus on compliant lending, derivatives, and liquidity provision are particularly popular.

• Layer 1 and Layer 2 scaling solutions received around $3.3 billion in funding. Projects like EigenLayer, LayerZero, and others focused on protocol are the biggest beneficiaries, reflecting investors' belief that Ethereum scalability and cross-chain interoperability are still unresolved opportunities.

• Custody, security, and compliance solutions attracted over $1.2 billion in funding. This also highlights the importance of trusted infrastructure as regulatory requirements tighten.

• Stablecoins and payment networks received around $1.5 billion in funding, indicating ongoing capital support for projects connecting fiat and on-chain liquidity.

• The AI-Crypto fusion has emerged as a rapidly growing theme, with approximately $700 million invested in projects combining large-scale language models, decentralized computation, and token incentives.

• Compared to 2021-2022, funding in the NFT and gaming sectors remains subdued, totaling around $600 million. This highlights a shift in the market from speculative collectibles to more utility-focused applications. In short, capital has decisively shifted from a pure consumer hype cycle to infrastructure, compliance tracks, and expanding ecosystems.

Noteworthy Funding Rounds

Several large funding rounds have dominated headlines and capital flows. Binance's $20 billion strategic funding in January set the tone for this year's funding market, demonstrating that even mature trading platforms still command significant investor confidence. Circle's $11 billion IPO became the largest public exit of the first half of the year, confirming that the stablecoin model is viable and a revenue-generating path. Furthermore, the funding rounds for Binance and Circle mark the second and third-largest funding rounds in cryptocurrency history, respectively.

Other notable funding rounds include TON's $4 billion strategic funding, Phantom's $1.5 billion Series C funding, and LayerZero's $1.5 billion investment. These alone accounted for a quarter of the total funding in the first half of the year.

An important dynamic trend: Nearly all major funding rounds attracted participation from top-tier investment firms such as a16z crypto, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, and Pantera Capital. These occurrences signal that mainstream venture capital funds will continue to concentrate equity in industry-leading companies.

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