Venture capitalists and strategic financing to the cryptocurrency industry surged to $49.7 billion in 2025, marking more than fourfold growth year over year, with a significant share of capital deployed toward centralized exchange reserve vault construction, balance-sheet fortification, and infrastructure expansion.
According to data compiled by RootData, the sharp rise in disclosed funding contrasts with a steep decline in deal count, highlighting a shift in capital allocation toward fewer but substantially larger transactions tied to exchange consolidation, custody, and reserve-backed strategies rather than early-stage experimentation.
Fewer Deals, Larger Checks
WuBlockchain reported that in December 2025, crypto venture firms disclosed 58 investment projects, up 3.6% month over month from November, but total disclosed funding fell sharply to $860 million, down 94.1% from November’s unusually large $14.54 billion tally.
For the full year, 898 projects were disclosed, representing a 42.1% decline from 1,551 projects in 2024.
Despite the drop in activity, total disclosed financing rose 433.2% year over year, from $9.33 billion in 2024 to $49.75 billion in 2025.
The divergence reflects a market increasingly dominated by balance-sheet-driven transactions, acquisitions, and infrastructure investments rather than broad-based startup funding.
Capital Concentrates Around Exchanges And Custody
Several of the largest transactions of 2025 were directly tied to centralized exchanges, trading infrastructure, or reserve-backed strategies.
In the largest crypto-related deal on record, Naver completed an all-stock acquisition of Dunamu, valuing the Upbit operator at approximately $10.3 billion.
The transaction made Naver Financial Dunamu’s parent company and highlighted the growing strategic importance of exchange profitability and custody scale.
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Meanwhile, Coinbase acquired derivatives exchange Deribit for $2.9 billion, expanding its footprint in institutional crypto options and reinforcing its derivatives-led growth strategy.
Reserve accumulation also remained a dominant theme.
Strategy raised multiple multi-billion-dollar financings in 2025, including preferred stock and zero-coupon notes, with proceeds used to expand its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings.
The company ended the year holding more than 600,000 BTC, making it one of the largest corporate holders globally.
Infrastructure, Data And Institutional Rails
Beyond exchanges, capital flowed heavily into infrastructure supporting institutional crypto adoption.
Intercontinental Exchange made a $2 billion strategic investment in Polymarket, gaining both equity exposure and a role as a global distributor of event-driven data.
Abu Dhabi’s government-backed MGX invested $2 billion in Binance, marking the largest crypto-native investment conducted entirely using stablecoins.
Other major transactions included Kraken’s $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader to expand regulated futures access, Galaxy Digital’s $1.4 billion debt financing to expand its Helios data center, and Ripple’s (XRP) $1.25 billion acquisition of institutional brokerage Hidden Road.
Sector Allocation Shows Institutional Tilt
Sector-level data for 2025 showed capital flowing primarily into financial and infrastructure categories rather than consumer crypto.
CeFi accounted for 13.8% of disclosed projects, DeFi 22.4%, AI 12.7%, and RWA/DePIN 7.3%, while NFT and GameFi activity fell to just 5.3%.
The funding pattern suggests that crypto investment in 2025 was less about expanding the number of onchain experiments and more about reinforcing custody, liquidity, compliance, and reserve transparency, a structural shift following multiple industry stress events in prior years.
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