Alex Thorn | Head of Firmwide Research | [email protected] | @intangiblecoins

Last year, venture capital firms invested more money into startups building in the crypto & blockchain technology sector than all prior years combined. Companies facilitating digital assets trading or building in the Web3 segment raised the most.

Key Takeaways:

• Venture capitalists invested more than $33bn into crypto/blockchain startups in 2021, more than all prior years combined. $22bn of that total (67%) went to fundraising rounds with deal sizes above $100m. Crypto/blockchain startups received almost 5% of venture capital deployed in 2021.

• Valuations in the crypto/blockchain space were 141% higher than the rest of the venture capital space in Q4, highlighting a founder-friendly environment and the intense competition among investors for deal allocations. Deal sizes were elevated but comparable to the rest of the VC landscape.

• At least 43 companies that raised venture capital in 2021 are unicorns. Pre-Seed deal counts continue to decline while Series A and later are growing, a sign that companies built in the 2018-2020 crypto bear market are maturing to later stages.

• Companies offering trading, investing, exchange, and lending services to digital assets investors led the pack with more than 41% of the capital share, but startups building in the NFT, Web3, DAO, and Metaverse sub-sectors came in second with 17% of the capital allocation.

• Crypto focused funds are larger than they’ve ever been, and 62% of managers that raised in 2020 also raised new vintages in again 2021.

Read the full report here.