Pantera: Funding hits a new high, but trading drops by 50%. What are crypto VCs doing?

Pantera Capital offers a clear assessment of the current crypto venture capital landscape: the money hasn’t dried up, but the investment approach has completely changed.

Data shows that this year, total funding in the crypto space has reached $34 billion, a record high, but the number of deals has decreased by nearly 50% compared to 2021 and 2022. The reason is simple: capital is shifting from “early-stage, dispersed narrative bets” to “later-stage, more mature, and more certain projects.”

Pantera reflects that in the previous cycle, under immature regulation and payment infrastructure, the industry was quick to bet on the metaverse and NFTs, expecting them to become the foundational infrastructure of culture and society. Essentially, the sequence was off.

At the same time, this round of funding is highly concentrated in mainline assets like Bitcoin, lacking the active family offices and individual investors that participated in the Pre-Seed stage in 21/22.

The result is fewer deals, more concentrated capital, and stricter due diligence. Crypto VCs are shifting from “storytelling” back to “getting the infrastructure right first.”