The MicroStrategy model has been recognized by the market, and most Bitcoin mining companies are taking advantage of the hot market to issue convertible bonds to raise funds.
Compiled by: Cookie & Elvin, RootData
In December 2024, BTC hit a new high of $106,000, and overall fluctuated between $92,000 and $100,000. The investment and financing data in the crypto field has rebounded, with the total financing amount reaching $741 million, up 62.8% month-on-month. The number of financings was 102, similar to the data in the previous two months. The average financing amount this month was $11.769 million, and the median financing amount was $4.1 million.
Financing trends in the crypto space over the past two years
In this article, we will focus on specific financing data, active investors, trending projects, and other aspects to present the changing trends of the crypto market.
1. Financing Data
The largest financing event of this month came from Avalanche, which completed $250 million in OTC financing, led by Dragonfly, Galaxy Digital, and ParaFi Capital. Other popular projects that completed financing include crypto banking services and payment solutions BVNK, decentralized open social graph Lens Protocol, global virtual asset service provider Klickl, modular public chain Plume Network, and blockchain asset securities company Prometheum.
In terms of financing amount and rounds, $1 million to $3 million is the most common financing range, with seed rounds still being the hottest financing rounds, although the percentage has decreased, with a total of 17 projects completing seed round financing. Notable projects include the AI Layer 1 blockchain ChainOpera AI ($17 million), decentralized AI infrastructure Exabits ($15 million), cryptocurrency credit card KAST ($10 million), and ZK verification network Fiamma ($4 million).
Additionally, 15 M&A events occurred in December, which is above the monthly average (10), indicating that leaders in the crypto industry are accelerating integration and layout. Yuga Labs acquired the tokenproof protocol; Synthetix acquired the leveraged token platform TLX; NFTGo acquired the crypto portfolio management project Mest; Gate.io announced its acquisition of the crypto asset exchange Coin Master, formally entering the Japanese market.
2. Active Investors
Animoca Brands has consecutively become the venture capital institution with the highest investment frequency in November and December, making five investments last month and eight this month. Their investment records include decentralized privacy protection solution FLock, social trading platform XYRO, Web3 native social marketing platform Bounty Bay, decentralized lending protocol Neptune, PoA blockchain Haven1, and AI computing economy layer GAIB.
Following closely in activity are Faction, Borderless Capital, GSR, Presto, Big Brain Holdings, and Blockchange, each making more than four investments.
Additionally, Sreeram Kannan, Michael Heinrich, Zaki Manian, and Smokey were the most active Web3 angel investors in December, each investing in at least three projects.
In terms of fundraising for new crypto funds, December showed more positive signals, with MicroStrategy's model gaining market recognition. Specific events include:
Sora Ventures launched a $150 million fund, using Bitcoin as the main reserve asset to optimize financial strategies and enhance shareholder value.
Bitcoin mining company MARA disclosed it raised $1.925 billion through convertible notes in November and December, purchasing 15,574 BTC at an average price of $98,529.
Former Google engineer Casey Caruso founded the venture capital fund Topology Ventures, which has raised $75 million. This fund will invest in cutting-edge technologies, including AI, decentralized networks, neurotechnology, aerospace, and robotics.
Semler Scientific raised an additional $50 million and has purchased 2,084 BTC at a price of $168.6 million, with an average price of about $81,000.
Venture capital fund Swish Ventures completed a $60 million fundraising round, which will be directed towards areas such as Web3 and AI. The fund plans to support 10 companies, investing between $5 million to $7 million in each transaction.
NASDAQ-listed Bitcoin mining company Riot Platforms announced plans to raise $500 million through the issuance of convertible preferred notes, with the net proceeds being used to purchase additional BTC and for general corporate purposes.
Crypto venture Dattice is raising funds for its third fund, with SEC filings not specifying the size of the fund.
Bitcoin mining company IREN announced plans to raise $400 million through the issuance of convertible bonds (coupon rate 3.25%, conversion premium 30%).
3. Trending Projects
RootData's heat value is derived from a weighted calculation normalized from platform search volume, clicks, user votes, and Twitter heat index data. The projects with the highest heat value in December include:
Fuel
Fuel is an operating system built specifically for Ethereum Rollups. Fuel allows Rollups to solve the PSI (Parallelization, State Minimization Execution, Interoperability) problems without making any sacrifices.
vana
Vana is an AI identity generation application that allows users to create a digital persona that can be used across different applications, while that digital persona maintains privacy and can only be controlled by the creating user and their authorized accounts.
Plume Network
Plume is a fully integrated modular chain focused on RWAfi. They have built the first modular, composable EVM-compatible chain focusing on RWA, aimed at simplifying the onboarding of all types of assets through native infrastructure and unified RWA-specific functionalities.
Nexus
Nexus Network is a massively parallel proof mining network. It is a world-class instantiation of Nexus zkVM, designed to run at a speed of one trillion CPU cycles per second, provided it connects sufficient computational power.
Magic Eden
Magic Eden is a cross-chain NFT marketplace that has built a user-friendly platform supported by market-leading minting and trading solutions. Magic Eden brings dynamic cultural moments to the blockchain, enabling users to create, discover, and collect unique NFTs.
XION
XION is a Layer 1 blockchain designed for consumer applications, providing a tailored seamless user experience for everyday users. Through its innovative Chain Abstraction infrastructure, XION simplifies complex crypto interactions and offers protocol-level account abstraction, gasless transactions, signature abstraction, cross-device usage, and fiat pricing functionalities.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid is a high-performance Layer 1 platform. Its vision is a fully on-chain open financial system where user-built applications connect with high-performance native components, all without compromising the end-user experience.
Thena
Thena is an automated market maker based on BNB Chain, inspired by Solidly, creating a simpler liquidity acquisition process for new and existing protocols through capital-efficient liquidity guidance.
Movement
Movement is a modular framework for building and deploying Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment. The team is building a suite of products and services that enable non-Move protocols to leverage the powerful capabilities of the Move programming language without writing a line of Move code.
Virtuals Protocol
Virtuals Protocol is a decentralized factory that creates various AI characters for different virtual worlds (such as games or online spaces) that can react through text, voice, and actions. Virtual Protocol provides incentives for the decentralized creation and monetization of AI characters for every virtual interaction (games, metaverse, online interactions, or others).
Blade Games
Blade Games is an on-chain game + AI agent ecosystem built around the zkVM stack, creating AI agents that run in games where users can play, train, and create their own on-chain economy.
BIO Protocol
The BIO Protocol is the financial layer of DeSci, aimed at accelerating the influx of capital and talent into on-chain science. bioDAO can raise funds using the auction contracts of the BIO Protocol and directly allocate the funds to research programs, IP assets, and other biotechnology organizations.
Balance
Balance is a Web3 experience infrastructure created by the Epal team aimed at mass user adoption, committed to providing a smooth transition experience from Web2 to Web3 for users. Balance leverages its user traffic pool to bring transformation to multiple industries (especially social and gaming) by combining blockchain and AI technologies.
Nodepay
Nodepay is a network infrastructure providing decentralized bandwidth for AI training. By connecting to the Nodepay network, users will be able to sell unused internet access to AI companies, enabling efficient transfer of public training data, labels, model sharing, and remote distributed training.
Usual
Usual is a stablecoin protocol whose launched USD is a permissionless and fully compliant stablecoin backed 1:1 by real-world assets (RWA). USUAL is a governance token that allows the community to guide the future development of the network. Usual addresses current stablecoin market issues by redistributing profits to the community and rewarding token holders with real-world asset-generated actual earnings.
Eclipse
Eclipse is a customizable rollup provider compatible with multiple Layer 1 blockchains. The platform allows developers to deploy their own rollups powered by the Solana operating system, using any chain for security or data storage.
Kaito
Kaito is an AI-driven digital asset research platform that aims to revolutionize cryptocurrency research and investment through AI. Kaito's MetaSearch aims to enable users to search across the entire crypto space through platforms like Twitter, Discord, governance forums, Mirror, Medium, and more with one-click products.
ChainOpera
ChainOpera AI provides Layer 1 blockchain and protocols for jointly owning and co-creating decentralized AI apps and agents, supported by the Federated AI operating system and platform.
FLock
FLock aims to build a decentralized privacy protection solution for AI. FLock proposes a research program called federated learning blocks (abbreviated as FLocks), which uses blockchain as a coordination platform among data holders for machine learning while keeping data local and private.
Berachain
Berachain is a high-performance EVM-compatible blockchain built on a liquidity proof consensus. Liquidity proof is a novel consensus mechanism designed to coordinate network incentives and establish strong synergy between Berachain validators and the project ecosystem.
4. Project Dynamics
In December, RootData also recorded many projects' mainnet launches, new coin issuances, and other events, helping users understand important project dynamics in the market and grasp earlier alpha opportunities.
Source: RootData Project Dynamics
The projects launching tokens in December include (listed from nearest to furthest date):
Source: RootData Market
Due to space limitations, the above are partial mainnet and token information. For more complete and timely data information, please visit the RootData official website (https://www.rootdata.com/zh/) to learn more.
