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Crypto startups amass $460 million from VCs in January

Feb. 7, 2024

OKX Ventures, Binance Labs, and Borderless Capital were the most active venture capital funds on crypto last month.

Crypto startups receive $460 million from VCs in January

Venture capital (VC) funds injected $460 million into cryptocurrency startups in January, marking a 13% increase from December’s investments, data from DefiLlama points out.

The bulk of the investments, totaling $311 million, targeted startups focused on developing infrastructure for the crypto market. Notably, HashKey secured a $100 million investment from OKX Ventures, intending to use the funds to develop a centralized crypto trading platform.

Sygnum also received significant funding, with a $40 million investment aimed at establishing a crypto bank, highlighting the growing interest in infrastructure within the crypto space.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) startups were the next major beneficiaries, attracting $47 million from venture capitalists. Among these, Kiln, an Ethereum staking platform, stood out with a $17 million investment from 1kx.

The gaming sector, particularly projects related to blockchain, also saw considerable investment, receiving $38.6 million. The largest single investment in this category was a $15 million contribution to SkyArk Chronicles by Binance Labs, earmarked for the development of ‘triple-A’ games.

Web3 applications drew $27.7 million in investments, with Tune.FM, a music streaming service leveraging Web3 technology, receiving $20 million to enhance its product offerings.

Most active VCs

OKX Ventures was the most active venture capital last month, participating in six different funding rounds. Aside from the massive investment directed to HashKey, OKX’s venture arm also showed interest in liquid staking.

Liquid staking hub Renzo and money market Navi Protocol raised $5.2 million combined, and OKX Ventures participated in both rounds. Web3 analytics platform 0xScope also captured the attention of the most active VC in January, which was part of the $5 million investment round.

Binance Labs was also a significant part of January’s investment landscape, taking part in four different rounds and being a lead investor in three of them.

Besides their interest in Web3 gaming, which was highlighted by the investment in SkyArk Chronicles, Binance VC arm made a strategic partnership with Puffer Finance, a liquid staking platform. Moreover, they participated in a private investment round for MEME, Memeland’s native token, and in the pre-seed of on-chain leveraged products platform Bracket Labs.

Borderless Capital closes the three most active VCs in 2024’s first month, participating in three funding rounds and being a lead investor in one of them. Decentralized data picked the interest of Borderless last month, which invested in DIMO, a decentralized car data protocol, and Bagel, a decentralized data platform aimed at supporting machine learning models.

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