Despite a challenging final quarter, 2025 will have seen record investments from venture capital firms, a fivefold increase compared to 2024. Funds were largely distributed across the CeFi and Digital Asset Treasuries (DAT) sectors.
Cryptocurrencies: Venture capital investments increase fivefold
Judging by Bitcoin’s price, 2025 stands out as a poor year, with a negative return of -6% for BTC. This result is all the more disappointing given that gold (+63%) and stock markets such as the Nasdaq (+20%) and the S&P 500 (16.5%) posted record performances during this period.
The prevailing gloom in the cryptocurrency market has clearly not dampened the appetite of venture capital firms (VC, for Venture Capital) in this sector, with total annual investment estimated at $49.75 billion—a 433.2% year-over-year increase from the $9.33 billion recorded in 2024.
This very positive figure was published by the crypto news site Wu Blockchain as part of a comprehensive report on fundraising and other strategic investments made by VCs between early January and late December, and it could rise further since “not all funding rounds were necessarily disclosed” at the time of writing.
These rising investments, however, involve a smaller number of transactions, since “the total number of projects for 2025 stands at 898,” representing a 42% year-over-year decline compared to the 1,551 projects recorded in 2024.
Which sectors and projects are involved?
It would therefore appear that the cryptocurrency market’s hesitations do not necessarily reflect the investments made in the sector by venture capital firms. As proof: the third quarter of 2025 was recently identified by the crypto firm Galaxy Digital as the most profitable in the sector since 2022.
According to the Wu Blockchain report, the sectoral breakdown of these transactions is as follows (in descending order):
- DeFi: 22.4%;
- CeFi: 13.8%;
- AI: 12.7%;
- Real World Assets (RWA)/DePIN: 7.3%;
- L1/L2 Blockchains: 6%;
- NFT/GameFi: 5.3%;
- Tools/Wallets: 5%.
In terms of the amounts involved, the largest share goes primarily to the creation of reserve vaults for centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs) within the CeFi sector, though no specific figures were provided.
As for the top three largest investments recorded in 2025, the historic record for “the largest funding round in crypto history” goes to Naver for its acquisition of Upbit platform operator Dunamu for approximately $10.3 billion. Next comes Coinbase and its acquisition of the leading crypto options platform, Deribit, and finally Strategy and its $2.52 billion fundraising round to purchase 21,021 BTC last July.
Top 10 Venture Capital Investments in 2025
These targeted investments demonstrate the extent to which venture capital funds are now flowing toward entities capable of supporting the transformation of the cryptocurrency sector to meet the expectations of traditional finance investors.
