Crypto Fundraising Soars to $1.76B in October, Highest Since November 2023

The total amount raised in the crypto industry during October 2024 saw a significant increase of 96% month-over-month, reaching $1.76 billion.

According to Messari’s latest report, this represents the highest level of fundraising activity since November 2023.

282 Crypto Deals in October

The report shows that the deal count in October increased by 25% compared to the previous month, totaling 282 deals. Several notable funding rounds contributed to the strong performance in October, including a $525 million raise by Praxis and a $68 million round for Infinite, a multi-chain platform.

It also includes Kraken receiving grants of 25 million OP tokens, worth around $100 million when the deal was struck earlier this year, from the Optimism Foundation as part of Kraken’s plans to launch a Layer 2 called Ink using the Optimism blockchain’s OP Stack framework.

Other notable deals include $43 million raised by Azure Games and $33 million secured by Yellow Card, a cryptocurrency exchange platform.

The early-stage deal volume in the crypto industry grew by 18% month-over-month in October 2024, reaching $396 million. Additionally, the deal count of this particular cohort was recorded to be 72, which increased by approximately 13% compared to the previous month. This included a $43 million round for Azra Games, a $25 million raise for the Nillion network, and a $14 million investment in Citrea, a decentralized finance project.

While the crypto fundraising activity in the financial sector for the month saw a slight decrease in deal volume of approximately 2% month-over-month, reaching $259 million, the deal count, however, grew by 23% to 92 deals.

Crypto exchanges represented 8 of the top 10 raises in the financial sector during this period, such as the $100 million raise by Kraken, a $33 million raise by Yellow Card, and a $25 million raise by Bitnomial. Other notable deals were secured by Ellipsis Labs, which raised $21 million, and Bitfinex, which raised $21 million.

The infrastructure sector saw a significant increase in deal volume throughout October as it grew by 73% month-over-month to reach $92 million. However, the deal count decreased by 8% to 24 deals. Glow, a decentralized compute and energy network, raised $30 million from investors including Framework and USV; and GEODNET also announced a deal, though the details were not provided.