Crypto fundraising reaches three-year peak, closing a successful H1

Crypto fundraising is on track to end the first half of 2025 on a high note, after a series of high-value private placements. Crypto VC funding usually tracks bullish periods, and has recovered after a couple of slower months. 

Crypto fundraising is back to levels not seen since 2022, ending the first half of 2025 with expansion, despite some slower months. Deals saw a trend shift, moving to large-scale private rounds and late-stage financing, with more cautious seed rounds. 

The model of funding a project only to sell tokens to exchanges is being phased out, instead focusing more on late-stage deals. 

VC funds remained vigilant for opportunities, but this time, the main driver was the rise of platforms with a widely adopted products. In the coming months, some of the high-profile crypto platforms plan to announce new large funding rounds. Some of the major deals include Polymarket, Pump.fun, and Kalshi. The latest deals may yet be included in the statistics for Q2 deals. Recently, World Liberty Fi also closed a $100M inflow from the Aqua 1 fund.

June fundraising breaks above $4B

Crypto fundraising tracks the general mood on the crypto market. After a relatively slow start to 2025, some months posted peak results. In March, total VC deals expanded to $5B. Even in slower months, VC fundraising was consistently above $1B, though some months included a concentration of large deals. 

Coinbase Ventures was the leader with nine deals, followed by Pantera Capital leading six funding rounds. Most of the deals were also made in undisclosed international locations, for a total of 70 rounds. The USA only saw 15 deals for the past month. However, those deals were the biggest, raising over $1.79B. Singapore-based projects raised a further $1.09B. 

A total of 103 rounds in June raised over $4.49B, with the potential for more deals to be added to the bottom line. The absolute record for VC deals is over $6.88B in November 2021, during the first Web3 boom. 

This time around, VC deals are not led by narrative, but by established use cases and signs of growth from transactions, fees, and liquidity. Projects like EigenCloud were among the significant deals for the past month, raising $70M in a late-stage round. 

For smaller projects, token sales, airdrops and special events have returned as a viable source of funding. In the past four months, token sales raised consistently over $4B on a monthly basis, tapping crypto natives and whales. 

In June, a total of 174 sales raised $4.79B, surpassing even the level of large VC rounds. The main source of interest in token sales were again the special campaigns of Binance Wallet and PancakeSwap. For the month of June, most TGE and token sales used those two platforms, achieving the highest returns. 

Binance Wallet projects posted gains of 483% on average, while PancakeSwap achieved 228.5%. The success of token sales relied on concentrating most of the opportunities on a single platform, having a guaranteed pool of buyers. Most projects have abandoned ICO attempts outside the top platforms, which give them the biggest exposure to liquidity.