Venture capital investments in cryptocurrencies. Where Funds Invest (February 2023)
After January's strong price gains, the crypto market lost momentum in February. While today's price rose to a six-month high, it only added 0.6% on a monthly basis. However, this has not stopped venture capital funds and private businessmen from actively investing in crypto startups. In this article, we will analyze the areas and startups that have attracted the most attention from investors.
We will also talk about the top 3 projects with the largest amounts of funds raised. And, of course, we will compare everything with the January figures.
Activity During the month, crypto startups conducted 116 funding rounds and raised capital of $895.87 million.
This is more than the January figures: 100 rounds, $846 million raised funds.
The most active investors were:
Coinbase Ventures (8 rounds);
Shima Capital (7 rounds);
Balaji Srinivasan and Big Brain (6 rounds each);
Jumpt Crypto and a16z (5 rounds each).
Sectors Now let's look at the breakdown by category and determine which sector invested more:
Blockchain services - 47;
GameFi - 21; DeFi - 19; CeFi - 11;
Blockchain infrastructure - 11;
NFT - 6.
Compared to the previous month, we can see slight changes: the number of GameFi projects increased (from 11 to 21), as well as the service sphere (from 39 to 47) and blockchain infrastructure (from 5 to 11). But this month there were no Social startups and the number of NFT projects decreased.
Top 3 startups by fundraising volume Interestingly, two brands raised more than $100 million in January. There were no such lucky winners in February - all of the companies raised less than that amount. Let's run through the projects that received the most funding.
Taurus - Series B round, $65 million On February 14, the Taurus project raised $65 million in a Series B round. The financing was led by Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank. Deutsche Bank, Pictet Group, Cedar Mundi Ventures, Arab Bank and others also participated in the investment. This is the second round of fundraising. In total, they raised $76 million in two rounds. Taurus SA is a startup that develops infrastructure to serve institutionalists from Europe. The project is notable because it recently began working with Cité Gestion, a Swiss bank. It will help it tokenize its own shares and develop blockchain technology.
SALT - Series A round, $64.5 million Crypto-lander SALT raised $64.5 million in a Series A round on Feb. 7. Interestingly enough, a couple of months ago, this company was planning to buy the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. But, as you know, the sale fell through due to the platform's bankruptcy. And the platform itself was left with debts and a shattered reputation. SALT will channel the capital obtained for new products and its growth strategy. At the same time, the project sold most of the preferred shares of Series A to existing borrowers and lenders. This is necessary to convert and write off the startup's outstanding debt. The names of the investor companies were not disclosed.
Carbonplace - seed round, $45 million On February 8, eco-friendlier startup Carbonplace raised $45 million in a seed round. The key investors were the National Bank of Australia, BNP Paribas, CIBC, Itaú Unibanco and others. The London-based company is building a decentralized exchange for the purchase/sale of carbon credits.
Carbonplace has already piloted transactions with several buyers/sellers, exchanges and payment systems. This includes Visa and Singapore's Climate Impact X exchange.
