As the cryptocurrency bull market picks up steam again, we are seeing a surge in venture capital (VC) funding rounds.
On May 16, cryptocurrency venture firm Aquarius announced the launch of a $600 million multi-strategy liquidity fund to help blockchain-based and ecosystem projects increase on-chain liquidity. In a statement to Cointelegraph, Aquarius staff noted that the strategic fund is backed by “Bitrise Capital, various leading miners, family offices and influencers.”
Additionally, the $600 million strategic fund will help projects in blockchain infrastructure, decentralized finance, artificial intelligence, Bitcoin (BTC) ecosystem, modular architecture, and early-stage data layer build communities alongside launch product development. no see. “As the first institutionalized fund of its kind, it systematically manages on-chain liquidity and supports various blockchain-based and ecosystem projects to meet their liquidity needs,” Aquarius wrote.
Aquarius was founded in 2018 by Singapore-based venture capitalist Lin Yang, who has backed notable projects such as Conflux as well as investments in emerging Web2 sectors including new energy, advanced manufacturing and finance. The company moved its headquarters to New York on May 8.
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency ecosystem projects are gaining significant funding as the bull market heats up.
On May 6, Cointelegraph reported that cryptocurrency VC funding has surpassed $1 billion for the second month in a row this year. In April, $1.02 billion was raised across 161 investment rounds, compared to $1.09 billion in March. Neither trend has been observed since the end of 2022.
Earlier this month, digital securities platform Securitize raised $47 million in a new strategic funding round led by BlackRock. Blockchain developer Aptos Labs and stablecoin issuers Paxos and Circle were also among the investors. Joseph Chalom, BlackRock’s global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships, will join Securitize’s board of directors. He labeled the investment as “another step in the evolution of our digital asset strategy (…) that will help us meet the future needs of our clients.”
Last April, Puffer Finance, a liquid staking project built on Ethereum layer 2 solution EigenLayer, secured $18 million in a Series A funding round from Coinbase Ventures and Kraken Ventures, among others, to launch its mainnet. Puffer Finance’s technology allows Ethereum validators to reduce their initial capital requirements from the 32 ETH required for individual stakers to just 1 Ether (ETH). The protocol surpassed $1.4 billion in total tentative value not long after its debut last February.
The market has changed dramatically compared to a year ago.
In September 2023, Tony Cheng, partner at Singapore cryptocurrency investment firm Foresight Ventures, recommended that projects do everything they can to survive. “If you’re short on capital and don’t have the runway to get through the next year or so, you have to take as much capital as you can get,” he said. “It will probably be about 2 to 3 months,” he explained at the time.
Bitcoin, which bottomed below $16,000 due to the sudden collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022, has been affected by the approval of funds for global spot Bitcoin listings and the gradual repayment of creditors’ money trapped in the non-existent exchange. Thanks to this, it rose by more than 300%. Some VCs are predicting that the current bull market will result in another ICO boom that will surpass previous highs set in early 2018.
Related: Cryptocurrency VC funding surges 53% in March, with Optimism gaining largest share