Crypto funding up 50% in 12 months as fewer, larger deals dominate

Crypto fundraising increased by almost 50% year-on-year between March 2025 and March 2026, despite the number of deals dropping 46% as VCs concentrated bets on late-stage and strategic mega-rounds.

Messari’s crypto fundraising overview shared by the company’s CEO Eric Turner on Sunday shows that the average deal size increased to $34 million in the last 12 months, up 272% from a year earlier. This came as the number of active investors fell 34.5% to 3,225.

“Capital concentration is heavily skewed by late-stage and strategic mega-rounds,” Messari said, noting that in February, just three fundraising events contributed 44% of the $795 million raised over the last month.

This included Tether’s $200 million investment into online marketplace Whop; $75 million raised for sports-focused peer-to-peer prediction market Novig in a Series B funding round led by Pantera Capital; and ARQ, a Latin American fintech app focused on stablecoins that secured $70 million in Series B funding on Wednesday, led by Sequoia Capital.

The $795 million figure marks a 65.3% fall from the previous 30 days.

Turner noted that, outside of Dragonfly Capital, no major VCs have closed new funding rounds lately, adding that “the industry needs some fresh capital.”

Meanwhile, Coinbase Ventures, QUBIC Labs, and Somnia have been the most active crypto investors over the past three months, Messari data shows.

Crypto funding nowhere near 2021-2022 levels

Monthly crypto fundraising has cooled significantly since its peaks in November 2021 and May 2022, when funding consistently hit $4 billion per month.

Since then, the $4 billion milestone has been reached only three times. Some investors have started to expand their focus toward the AI and high-performance computing sectors.

Related: Kalshi, Polymarket eye $20B valuations in potential fundraising: WSJ

While most crypto fundraising has focused on late-stage activity, Messari noted that early-stage fundraising “remains high in volume but fragmented.”

Messari pointed out that Interstate’s $1.5 million funding round on Thursday came from more than 15 participants, ranging from firms like Bloccelerate VC to individual angel investors like Sergey Gorbunov.

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