Author: insights4vc; Compiler: Shaw, Golden Finance

On June 12, 2026, SpaceX is about to launch the largest IPO of a technology company in history, testing global market risk appetite. The company aims to raise approximately US$75 billion, with a pre-money valuation of US$1.75 trillion, and market subscription demand has exceeded US$250 billion. However, the popularity of this huge book-building deal can easily lead to misjudgment of the overall financing environment. Although the total amount of venture capital transactions has increased significantly, and crypto companies have once again reported that they have tens of billions of new idle funds, the coverage of this round of financing recovery is extremely narrow. In the first quarter of 2026, global venture capital completed 8,464 transactions, with a total scale of US$330.9 billion; OpenAI’s US$122 billion financing round alone reshaped this quarter’s data. The four ultra-large financings attracted a total of approximately US$188 billion, accounting for about 65% of the total funds raised.

The crypto venture capital market also shows the same differentiation pattern. This category has clearly emerged from the capital winter of 2023 to 2024, but the recovery is not a comprehensive rise, nor will it replicate the bull market in 2021. Funds are highly concentrated in leading funds, mature projects, and infrastructure tracks with clear financial models, focusing on stablecoins, payments, prediction markets, asset tokenization, on-chain credit, and underlying circulation channels with strict compliance requirements. Therefore, the core evidence of the new round of crypto venture capital super cycle is reflected in the trend of fund concentration and institutionalization, rather than the general expansion of the market as a whole.

Signals released by the overall venture capital market

From the surface data, the overall venture capital environment has recovered, but the eye-catching head data is seriously distorted. KPMG's global venture capital report for the first quarter of 2026 shows that 8,464 investments were completed during the period, with a total investment amount of US$330.9 billion, a sharp increase from US$128.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025; global venture capital scale for the whole year of 2025 was US$406.7 billion, with a total of 35,684 transactions.

In the U.S. market, PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) calculated that the total number of transactions in the first quarter of 2026 reached US$267.2 billion, seemingly setting a quarterly record high. However, the first five large-scale financings accounted for 73.2% of the funding volume; the AI ​​track funding accounted for as high as 88.8%, but the number of transactions only accounted for 42.5% of the total. A simple calculation shows that after excluding the first five largest rounds of financing in the US market, the total remaining transaction volume in the first quarter was only about US$71.6 billion. Although the volume is acceptable, it is far from a comprehensive and frenetic recovery.

The fund raising side shows the same differentiated pattern. The total global venture capital fundraising in 2025 is US$128.9 billion, and the annualized fundraising scale in the first quarter of 2026 is US$58.4 billion; the US raised US$47.8 billion in the first quarter. The increase mainly comes from the closing of leading flagship funds, and is not a general recovery in the industry. PitchBook data shows that in the first quarter of 2026, established and mature institutions won 90.9% of the funds raised, and the average fund raising cycle lengthened to 15.3 months. KPMG’s view is consistent with this:Limited partners (LPs) give priority to leading flagship funds, and new small and medium-sized fund managers face long-term structural fundraising difficulties. This is not a cycle of increasing risk appetite in the traditional sense, but a risk-averse market in which funds are concentrated in leading institutions with well-known brands, highly liquid targets, and high credibility of fair value.

a16z The scale of the latest round of fundraising intuitively reflects how extreme the degree of capital concentration is. In January 2026, the institution announced the completion of more than US$15 billion in fundraising, covering growth investments, infrastructure, application projects, biotechnology, US dynamic industries and other types of venture capital strategies. According to a16z, this entire amount of funding will account for more than 18% of all venture capital investment in the United States in 2025. This number does not represent a comprehensive recovery in the willingness of limited partners (LPs) to invest. Instead, it shows that the total amount of venture capital subscription capital pool is shrinking, and a few multi-strategy comprehensive platforms are collecting most of the funds; such leading platforms have institutional-level capital volume, mature and stable past performance, and can lay out multiple tracks of artificial intelligence, national defense, crypto assets, and late-stage growth investment under the same brand.

Combined with the data that established mature fund managers accounted for 90.9% of the funds raised in the first quarter of 2026, this trend shows that limited partners have not fully returned to the venture capital track. Instead, they concentrate their investment chips on a few comprehensive investment platforms. Such institutions have mature investment portfolios, higher market recognition of liquidity, and can raise multi-strategy funds at the same time. The final situation is that the overall fund-raising amount of the industry has recovered, but the financing channels of ordinary mid-level fund managers have not improved simultaneously.

The macro environment still plays a key role. The Federal Reserve will maintain the benchmark interest rate at a range of 3.5%-3.75% at the April 2026 interest rate meeting. Reuters news shows that most large brokerage firms have switched to predicting that the United States will not cut interest rates in 2026. At the same time, U.S. bond yields rose from the spring lows, with the 10-year U.S. bond yield hitting 4.484% on March 27. At the beginning of June, the market was worried that the AI ​​stock valuation bubble and giant IPOs would lead to an expansion of stock supply, and related sectors sold off. As long as exit channels remain open, primary market valuation multiples can remain high. Currently, only a small number of high-quality leading U.S. stocks and scarce late-stage private equity projects support valuations.

SpaceX is the most intuitive indicator for interpreting this cycle. As of the statistics deadline, its IPO was originally scheduled to be priced on June 11. The issuance pricing and post-listing trend have not yet been finalized, but the market signals are already clear. If SpaceX successfully completes the target fundraising scale of US$75 billion, it will bring large cash dividends to LPs, reshape the capital costs of scarce private equity assets, and boost the listing confidence of other large companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which secretly submitted U.S. IPO applications in early June.

Crypto fund raising is picking up, but funds are highly concentrated

The most powerful evidence of the new round of crypto capital cycle is not the broadening of the coverage of investment layout, but the few leading brands launching a wave of new fund raising. On May 5, 2026,a16z encryption sector completed the fifth phase of fund raising with a scale of US$2.2 billion. The agency made it clear that stablecoins, on-chain lending, asset tokenization, prediction markets, digital wallets and AI agent transactions mark the stage when cryptographic infrastructure has officially become a product that is actually available to the public. On May 4, 2026, Haun Ventures announced the completion of a new fund raising of US$1 billion, with investments centered around three main lines:New financial infrastructure, new asset and trading markets, and intelligent autonomous economies. Dragonfly closed its $650 million fourth fund in February 2026. Variant launched its fourth fund with a scale of US$222 million on June 3, 2026. The core theme is "autonomy", extending the original investment logic of digital asset ownership to the AI ​​​​agent and market infrastructure track. ParaFi raised US$125 million in venture capital funds in March 2026, and also disclosed that since the beginning of 2025, its other digital asset strategies have raised a total of US$325 million.

As of June 10, 2026, venture capital funds that have publicly announced the completion of fundraising, main operations, or layout of the encryption track have a total fundraising scale of approximately US$4.2 billion; if Palafi’s non-venture capital digital asset strategic funds are included, the total amount can reach approximately US$4.5 billion. The volume of reserve funds to be raised is larger than the funds that have been raised: According to news, Paradigm is raising up to US$1.5 billion in cutting-edge technology funds, covering AI, robotics and encryption tracks; Blockchain Capital plans to establish two new funds, with a total target of raising US$700 million; Pantera’s fifth phase of the blockchain comprehensive fund is still being promoted, with a target size of US$1 billion, and the official materials indicate that there are first-round closing terms. Adding up the officially announced target size and the completed funds raised, the market rumor that "the fund-raising sprint exceeds 6 billion US dollars" is generally true; but if only the venture capital funds that have been launched are counted, this number is exaggerated.

The degree of capital concentration in the industry is extremely disparate. Looking only at the closed funds: a16z, Haun, Dragonfly, Variant, and ParaFi, five managers have collected almost all new crypto fund funds that will be publicly launched from 2025 to 2026. Calculation of the size of the superimposed target to be raised: the five leading institutions, a16z, Paradigm, Haun, Pantera, and Blockchain Capital, have a total target fundraising target of approximately US$6.4 billion. It can be seen that this round of crypto venture capital recovery only belongs to leading and established institutions with mature performance and strong scale. Ordinary midstream fund managers have not received dividends. Galaxy full market data confirms this conclusion: in the fourth quarter of 2025, only 11 new crypto venture capital funds were launched, raising a total of US$1.98 billion; in the first quarter of 2026, 8 new funds raised a total of US$1.1 billion, and the number of fund issuances hit a quarterly low since the third quarter of 2020.

Investment investment presents a bipolar dumbbell pattern

The quarterly series of reports released by Galaxy are the clearest source of public data to directly observe changes in the industry. Crypto venture capital investment status:

• Q4 2024: 416 deals, US$3.5 billion invested

• Estimated first quarter of 2025: 443 transactions, US$4.9 billion invested

• Q2 2025: 378 deals, US$1.98 billion invested

• Q3 2025: 414 transactions, US$4.59 billion invested

• Q4 2025: 425 deals, $8.5 billion invested

• Q1 2026: 355 deals, $4 billion invested

A total of 1,660 investments were completed throughout 2025, with a total investment scale of approximately US$20 billion, setting a new annual high since 2022, but still lower than the peak bull market level from 2021 to early 2022.

Cryptocurrency venture capital investment and number of transactions (Source: Galaxy Research)

What is more critical than the magnitude of the capital rebound is the capital structure. In the fourth quarter of 2025, 11 large-scale financings exceeding US$100 million absorbed 85% of the total investment in the quarter. In the first quarter of 2026, mature-stage companies received 57% of the investment funds; the proportion of pre-seed round transactions dropped to 19%, and mature-stage transactions accounted for a quarter of all completed financing rounds. In the first quarter of 2026, the median value of a single financing in the crypto industry hit a new high, exceeding US$4.5 million. Although the valuation data has a small sample size, the trend is clear and remains within the high range of this cycle. The overall market has formed a dumbbell-shaped pattern:There are still transactions in early-stage small-amount financing, but large-amount funds are highly concentrated in a small number of mature companies with revenue, compliance licenses (or both).

There has also been a significant shift in industry investment, with funds significantly shifting from the pan-“Web3 popularization track” to the crypto-financial sector. In the first quarter of 2026, the transaction/exchange/investment/loan category according to Galaxy received approximately US$2.6 billion in investment and 74 transactions. It ranked first in terms of capital volume and also led in the number of transactions; the infrastructure track ranked second with 56 transactions; Web3, NFT, decentralized autonomous organizations, metaverse, and game tracks still reached 39 transactions, but the scale of money absorption shrank significantly. The popularity of asset tokenization, payment and incentives, compliance services, digital wallets, and AI-related track financing remains stable. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the same financial sector received more than US$5 billion in funds, mainly from mature-stage large-scale financing from companies such as Revolut, Kraken, and Rain. In short, the areas for obtaining huge investments are concentrated in stablecoin distribution, trading platforms, digital wallets, underlying market facilities, and credit circulation channels; although there are still many small-amount financings in games, consumer Web3, and long-tail infrastructure, the amount of funds obtained is very limited.

The current core consensus of leading crypto funds

The unified view of the top fund managersis not that "the encryption industry has fully recovered", but that the financial implementation scenario finally has mature investment value. The fifth phase of the a16z fund most intuitively reflects this shift:The fund narrative no longer talks about the abstract underlying protocol architecture, but focuses on actual businesses such as stablecoins, on-chain finance, prediction markets, lending, asset tokenization, digital wallets, and AI agent transactions. Haun Ventures’ attitude is more straightforward, and its opportunities are concentrated in payment, banking services, capital markets, identity authentication and “intelligent autonomous economies”. Variant's new fund takes "autonomy" as its core framework and extends digital ownership investment to intelligent systems, new trading markets and developer applications. Dragonfly’s public statements and recent investment actions are all biased towards stablecoins, payments, and prediction markets, and no longer bet on metaverse themes. Paradigm is a special case. The only difference is that the scope of investment permission is wider: it still has a layout in the encryption track, but it is reported that it is raising a fund that can simultaneously invest in the fields of AI and robotics. The team will screen targets with technical synergies.

As a result, the industry will form three distinct investment strategic routes in 2026:

• Pure encryption specialist: The focus of investment remains unchanged, shifting from underlying infrastructure to profitable financial products. a16z and Dragonfly are typical representatives;

• Encryption + AI fusion: The logic is that autonomous intelligent software is inseparable from programmable currency, on-chain identity and settlement systems, Haun and Variant follow this idea;

• Broad-spectrum expansion of cutting-edge technology: Cryptocurrency is only one of the core pillars, not all funds invest in. Paradigm is the most representative institution of this model.

Judging from the current performance of capital investment, the implementation matching degree of the first two strategies is much higher than that of a layout model that fully shifts to the pure AI track.

The trust cost model explains the underlying logic of fund aggregation

The common core of stablecoins, prediction markets, on-chain credit and asset tokenization is not only that they are all financial applications; in each business scenario targeted by the track, the cost of building trust in the traditional system is high, the entry barriers are fragmented, or the original underlying architecture is naturally difficult to build a trustworthy mechanism. This difference is crucial. It can strictly explain why institutional funds are concentrated in these fields, but remain cautious about most consumer encryption projects.

The "Trust Cost 2.0" research framework released by 1kx in June 2026 has strong reference value. Its first version of the theory in 2018 proposed that blockchain can penetrate economic activities with a scale of about 29 trillion US dollars, covering the four major scenarios of account preservation, contract performance, asset preservation, and ownership verification. The new version of the theory focuses on questions that are more sophisticated and more in line with the investment perspective: In this penetrable market, which business model can really incubate venture capital-level companies? The conclusion of the report shows thatprojects that can achieve long-term and stable growth basically rely on two major driving models, and leading companies with top strength often have both.

The first set of mechanisms is to compress the monopoly rent of trust intermediaries. The traditional financial system requires paying costs to various trusted intermediaries such as banks, custodians, securities firms, exchanges, and payment processors, in the form of handling fees, buying and selling spreads, settlement time differences, capital accruals, operating expenses, etc. If the on-chain system can achieve the same credible transaction effect at a lower cost, it can transform the monopoly rent earned by established intermediaries into exploitable market space and create commercial value.

The second mechanism is to empower innovation and create a new market from zero to one. In this scenario, blockchain is not simply copying and reducing prices of existing services, but rather realizing products, trading markets or participation models that traditional infrastructure cannot stably supply due to issues such as jurisdictions, fixed business hours, dispersed counterparties, no programmability, and high entry barriers. The 1kx framework points out that in history, high-quality projects with extremely large volumes often achieve considerable rent compression and also open up new market access methods or functional tracks.

Four core blockchain features that support the two major mechanisms:

• Programmable Nominal Settlement: Value can flow freely in the form of data;

• Verifiable calculations and on-chain status: Solvency, asset ownership, and transaction records can all be verified, rather than relying solely on unilateral declarations by institutions;

• Architectural neutrality: Reduce the risk of platform operators tampering with rules privately and competing with platform participants;

• Permissionless access: Users and developers can enter without approval from a centralized gatekeeper.

The first two features are mainly used to reduce the cost of the existing trust system; the latter two can create new products and new markets that traditional institutions restricted by regional regulations cannot operate.

How does this framework interpret the current investment cycle

1. Stablecoin payments. Stablecoins can significantly reduce the costs and time differences in capital occupancy caused by agency bank capital transactions, pre-margins, and cross-border settlements. But the greater value lies in empowering the incremental market: allowing individuals and companies who cannot easily access the U.S. banking system to realize all-weather U.S. dollar asset holdings, programmable fund pool management, and global payment accounts. Stablecoins themselves can easily fall into homogenization, and long-term stable profits will be deposited in wallets, payment cards, fund management, compliance, and credit service layers that control distribution channels.

2. Prediction markets. The prediction market can squeeze the profit margins earned by gaming companies and centralized trading platforms, but its most unique value is to open up a global borderless event trading market; many event categories are subject to regulatory restrictions, and traditional exchanges will not approve them, or the approval pace is extremely slow. Polymarket is a typical example of the permissionless empowerment model; Kalshi proves that with a formal license and a compliant distribution system, you can also build a centralized business with barriers around the same demand. Comparing the two, we can also see that not all predictive trading scenarios must rely on blockchain; only when global participation, open market construction, and neutral settlement become core needs rather than additional functions, blockchain will have irreplaceable value.

3. On-chain credit. On-chain credit clearly superimposes two sets of value mechanisms at the same time: on the one hand, it reduces manual operation and maintenance, multi-layer intermediaries, and settlement costs; on the other hand, it realizes programmable collateral, real-time position visibility, automatic liquidation, and can embed a financial position into other application ecosystems. The institutional value of Morpho lies not only in on-chain lending, but also as an embeddable underlying credit layer that connects exchanges, wallets, and asset management platforms to its own products.

4. Tokenization of assets. Tokenization needs to be viewed dialectically: packaging off-chain securities into tokens may optimize distribution and settlement efficiency, but it may not form a long-term barrier to the original blockchain. Real high-barrier opportunities come from issuing assets on the native chain, which can be used as collateral for programmable, real-time liquidation. 1kx made a clear distinction: the token packaging business that traditional institutions can easily replicate is more valuable than the native on-chain financial instruments that completely eliminate transfer agents, settlement float and other traditional securities links.

Use this to identify inferior investment targets

Many projects just use tokens, wallets, and smart contract shells, but do not solve the actual trust cost pain points. If the blockchain is just a distribution channel, the business can be built using traditional databases. There will be no significant rent compression, nor will it create incremental functions that cannot be achieved by traditional systems. This can explain why the performance scale of ordinary consumer Web3, homogenized chain games, and a large number of enterprise alliance chain projects is far less than that of exchanges, stable currency infrastructure, and on-chain financial protocols.

Value does not belong only to decentralized protocols

This framework does not mean that revenue will only flow to decentralized protocols. 1kx review history pointed out: open source systems have the strongest advantage in the underlying protocol layer that carries trust; closed source commercial companies often rely on product ease of use, compliance qualifications, and channel distribution to reap profits. Therefore, even if the underlying settlement layer is open source, Coinbase, licensed custodians, wallets, and stablecoin infrastructure companies can still achieve huge equity returns.

This is particularly critical for the current market: Rain and Kalshi are not decentralized protocols themselves, but are built on new trust settlement infrastructure, packaging standardized products that can be used by enterprises and compliant users; Morpho is closer to the open source protocol layer; Polymarket is an open source settlement architecture with a public-friendly interactive interface. The four companies are at different positions in the same value chain and are not a unified encryption investment paradigm.

The framework clarifies the logic of combining encryption and AI

1kx proposed that AI has given rise to a new trust risk scenario: generative AI can easily create fake identities, information and content; autonomous agents also need funds, accounts, and financial services as the basis for operation. The investment opportunity is not to simply add tokens to AI products, but to build underlying facilities that can verify identity, content traceability, authority control, and trusted settlement - trust constraints are the core bottleneck. Smart payment and machine autonomous wallets are real incremental empowerment markets, but their maturity is far less than that of stablecoins, transactions, and on-chain credit.

Due diligence evaluation criteria for investors

Compared to simply judging whether a company is in a popular encryption track, a more core verification question list:

• Which specific trust cost has been reduced by the project?

• Who is currently earning this part of the monopoly rent?

• Why can only blockchain effectively compress this cost?

• What new functions/markets have been created that cannot be achieved with traditional infrastructure?

• After traditional giants follow up on similar infrastructure projects in the future, where will the long-term value ultimately be deposited?

Startups without clear answers may be able to scale up in the short term, but it is difficult for blockchain to become a lasting moat.

Frame positioning description

This model is only an investment analysis perspective and is not an absolute conclusion. This is the self-developed investment logic of 1kx Fund, which is partly based on its own holdings, internal classifications and staged valuations. The performance cases in the institutional description are only examples and have not been audited, and cannot represent the complete income of the fund as a whole. The core value of this article is that it proposes a clear logic for examining issues, rather than treating its past classifications as ironclad evidence.

Core conclusion

It is no accident that funds gather in the crypto financial track. Capital is concentrating on the market with three major characteristics: high trust costs, business scale that can be verified through real capital flows, and programmable/permissionless access to create products that are difficult to copy by traditional systems. This confirms the core judgment of the full text: this round of crypto venture capital recovery is highly differentiated, and the investable value is no longer divided by token track, but is determined by the real economic value mechanism.

Case studies of four benchmark companies: firm investment direction

Kalshi

Kalshi is the only leading prediction market platform in the United States with federal-level regulatory barriers. In 2020, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recognized KalshiEX as a compliant contract trading market; in January 2025, regulatory revisions allowed it to carry out intermediary futures trading, and the compliance qualifications gradually transformed into institutional business strength. In March of that year, Kalshi completed a new round of financing of approximately US$1 billion, with a post-money valuation of US$22 billion; the previous round of financing in December was valued at US$11 billion. The annualized trading volume of the platform rose to US$178 billion, and institutional trading volume surged 800% in half a year.

The platform's disclosure materials in May showed that Kalshi accounted for more than 90% of the trading volume in the U.S. prediction market; according to data from "Barron's", the trading volume of sports events in May alone reached 10.4 billion US dollars. The investment logic is clear: the federally regulated event trading market can extend from political elections to sports, macroeconomics, commodities, and corporate risk hedging scenarios. The risks are also prominent: the prediction market has now been severely investigated by insider trading supervision. In June 2026, Kalshi was forced to increase compliance risk control due to suspicious trading incidents. The long-term core test is not market demand, but whether high-frequency event trading can continue to maintain transaction purity, get rid of dependence on election cycles, and support high valuation multiples at the exchange level.

Kalshi vs Polymarket

Polymarket

Polymarket is still the world’s top event information trading platform, but it faces greater legal compliance uncertainty than Kalshi. In 2022, the company was fined by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) for operating an unregistered derivatives trading platform. Since then, the platform's access to U.S. users has been restricted; in October 2025, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced a strategic investment of up to US$2 billion, valuing Polymarket at a pre-money valuation of approximately US$8 billion. This move will tie the platform's event market data to the traditional mainstream exchange operating system. In April 2026, Reuters reported that Polymarket was negotiating a round of financing of US$400 million, with a target valuation of approximately US$15 billion; however, as of the deadline for data statistics, this financing was only a rumor of negotiations and had not actually been completed.

In terms of trading activity, Dune Analytics data shows that in April 2026, the combined monthly nominal trading volume of the Polymarket offshore exchange and the US sub-region platform was approximately US$10.3 billion, compared with only US$3.8 billion in the same period last year. In May, Polymarket launched a trading market that benchmarks the development nodes of unlisted companies, directly positioning it as a fair pricing tool for institutional investors.

Bull logic: Polymarket has the potential to grow into a global event data underlying infrastructure, rather than just a crypto-native gaming trading application. Short-selling risk: The platform as a whole is still in a regulatory gray area, with prominent hidden dangers in market manipulation, inside information, and cross-border regulatory enforcement. At the same time, the latest high valuation circulated in the market is only in the financing negotiation stage, and there is no evidence of the landing of real funds.

Rain

Rain is one of the most typical examples of a shift in funding focus from stablecoin issuance to stablecoin distribution. According to Reuters news in January 2026, Rain completed a US$250 million Series C financing, led by ICONIQ, with a post-investment valuation of US$1.95 billion, and the company’s cumulative financing exceeded US$338 million. Rain itself does not issue stablecoins, but provides a set of underlying infrastructure for enterprises to issue and operate payment cards and digital wallets bound to stablecoins. It can be used in all scenarios that support Visa payment. Data disclosed by the company shows that the number of cards in use has increased 30 times year-on-year, and the annualized payment transaction volume has soared 38 times year-on-year. The above data is only announced by the company itself and has not been publicly audited by a third party. Rain’s official website highlights its ability to achieve daily on-chain clearing, full set of compliance services and project operation and maintenance capabilities with card organizations. Enterprises can build a cross-border payment card business system with one click without having to connect with multiple local issuers and service providers.

The core logic of capital’s optimism about the distribution track is that it is easier to build a solid network effect in the distribution link: the barriers formed by corporate card issuance business, capital pool circulation, and user consumption expenditure are much higher than the issuance business of simply issuing additional U.S. dollar-anchored tokens. The main risk comes from fierce industry competition. There is no public data on the precise market share between Rain and Bridge, BVNK, Stripe and banking competitors. Its business growth is more about its relative growth rate than its absolute dominance in terms of volume. Even so, Rain fully fits the investment paradigm of the new generation of crypto venture capital: licensed and compliant financial infrastructure assets with stable cash flow.

Morpho

Morpho intuitively proves that on-chain credit is transforming from a leverage tool in the crypto circle into a universal financial infrastructure that can be reused by multiple parties. The project disclosed in the "Morpho 2026" review report released in January 2026: As of the end of 2025, the number of users has increased from 67,000 to more than 1.4 million, the scale of deposits has increased from US$5 billion to US$13 billion, and the scale of outstanding active loans has reached US$4.5 billion; at the same time, the platform has completed cooperation with Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gemini and Forge, a subsidiary of Societe Generale. Business system docking. DefiLlama data in June 2026 shows that the platform’s current active loan scale is approximately US$3.4 billion, and the annualized fee income of the agreement exceeds US$200 million. Morpho has become one of the top on-chain lending systems in terms of economic returns.

Total Morpho deposits, source: Morpho

On June 10, 2026, the Morpho Association officially announced the completion of a US$175 million financing round, jointly led by Paradigm, a16z Crypto, and Ribbit, with strategic participation from Apollo Fund, Circle Ventures and other institutions. Secondary market transaction information shows that the post-investment valuation is approximately US$2 billion, but Morpho’s official announcement did not disclose the valuation. This difference is worth noting. The bullish logic is very solid: Morpho is gradually becoming the underlying lending infrastructure that can be embedded in exchanges, digital wallets and institutional financial products, rather than an ordinary lending application for retail investors. The core risk lies in the ability to capture profit gains. The actual business volume of the protocol can be verified through on-chain data, but the balanced relationship between business scale, governance mechanism and the long-term sustainable income model of token holders has not yet been fully finalized.

Signals sent by the market

Funds are flowing to application projects with infrastructure profit models, rather than simply building infrastructure. The winning company is closely aligned with capital flow, fee income, compliance system and channel distribution. This is also the core reason why stablecoin channels, digital wallets, on-chain credit, predictive trading platforms, and asset tokenization tools can win large amounts of financing and deeply connect with leading institutions to discuss cooperation.

Investors now pay more attention to the quantifiable real business scale rather than the expected appreciation of the token. In 2021, crypto venture capital often bets on the future appreciation of tokens and widespread popularization among the people; by 2026, the focus of investment will become assessment of transaction volume growth, compliance license access, enterprise-level distribution capabilities, and whether the project can be integrated into the underlying financial system. Rain and Morpho perfectly fit this new set of standards; Kalshi and Polymarket can only adapt to this set of investment logic if they transform into formal exchanges and information pricing markets instead of gambling casinos.

Stablecoins have actually become the core entry point for venture capital investment in the crypto industry. It is not that the issuance of stablecoins is the best business in itself, but that it can open up a series of peripheral income-increasing spaces such as payment, credit card business, wallets, foreign exchange, corporate fund management, and credit. The prediction market has grown into a serious financial category, but it comes with its own policy and compliance risks, and the valuation needs to be discounted accordingly. The prerequisite for on-chain credit to be recognized by institutions now is to have well-known partners to handle compliance, asset custody and distribution; however, two major issues, income distribution to token holders and the delineation of regulatory boundaries, are still unresolved.

Medium-sized projects in the sandwich layer still have difficulty in financing: Enterprises that have completed the seed round and have not yet formed a scale are neither niche consumer applications nor have stable revenue platforms. The two ends of the overheated market are the scarce leading targets in the mature stage and projects that can tell the story of AI integration. Founders who are deeply involved in consumer encryption products, chain games, ordinary first-level public chain gimmick projects, and undifferentiated token products face a financing environment that is far more severe than the overall market data shows.

It is true that encryption institutions are deploying AI, but they are not completely abandoning the encryption track

The core data does not show that crypto venture capital is giving up on the crypto business, but is simultaneously hedging against two major real trends. First, the overall potential market of the AI ​​​​track is larger, limited partners are more willing to invest, and the exit path is faster. Second, many AI implementation scenarios naturally require the unique advantages of encryption technology: programmable payment, persistent identity system, machine autonomous wallet, full auditability, and open settlement. This also explains: Paradigm is reported to have established a new fund to expand its layout in AI and robots but has not cut off the encryption business; Haun directly focuses on the narrative of intelligent autonomous economies; Variant has changed the core investment framework to "autonomy" and no longer divides categories by token track.

The scope of the encryption AI fusion track with high investment value is very focused:

• Agent payment and machine commerce: autonomous programs require native channels to pay for computing power, data, interfaces and various service fees;

• Agent identity verification, authority control and traceability tools: autonomous systems are inseparable from access authorization, content traceability, and fraud prevention mechanisms;

• AI empowers compliance risk control and security systems: Open financial scenarios require automated real-time monitoring. The above directions are naturally highly coordinated with stablecoins, wallets, and the underlying market infrastructure.

质量薄弱的融合叙事普遍存在这些问题：只是拿 AI 当作老旧代币故事的营销包装；多数无真实付费客户的去中心化算力项目；大量 “AI 智能体绑定模因币” 的试验项目；前沿科技多元化布局却和基金管理人自身核心能力毫无衔接。区分靠谱融合战略与单纯蹭热点叙事的关键：基金能否拿出实打实的落地投资或基建落地成果，而非只发布宣传博文。以此评判，Haun、Variant、Paradigm 的布局远比只更新官网宣传页的基金务实。

判断与总结

加密风投步入新一轮资金周期，但并非全面普涨的超级大周期。回暖体现在三点：头部基金募资渠道重新打通；成熟期加密金融企业能拿到高估值大额融资；加密与金融科技企业的美股 IPO 窗口相比 2023、2024 年大幅拓宽。 但行业普涨逻辑并不成立：资金投放依旧是哑铃式两极分化，新基金募资高度集中头部，大量早期细分赛道除非绑定可量化资金流或高壁垒准入资质，否则很难通过机构尽调。

那么加密风投是否迎来真正的超级景气周期？答案是尚未。当下开启的是范围更收敛、机构化程度更高、盈利逻辑更清晰的周期。主流优质投资标的从泛区块链普及项目，转向有真实使用场景的金融基础设施，重点覆盖稳定币、支付、预测市场、资产代币化、信贷、合规服务。市场估值分化明显：顶尖优质标的估值偏高，无差异化的中游企业依旧估值承压。 当自主系统需要资金、身份、结算、风控能力时，AI 会强化加密赛道投资逻辑；但单纯分散加码纯 AI 业务，反而会稀释基金原本深耕加密的核心优势，除非管理人能证明自身具备 AI 领域独特投研能力。

能成长为机构级大体量企业的长期赢家，大概率是深度嵌入金融底层体系的项目，而非靠代币炒作叙事生存的标的。 包含稳定币分销、持牌事件交易市场、嵌入式链上信贷、资产代币化基建、合规钱包，以及配套市场数据、风险对冲工具。如果出现以下情况，看多逻辑将会失效：IPO 窗口昙花一现、高利率环境持续挤压成熟期估值倍数、稳定币监管政策各地割裂而非统一明晰、预测市场热潮遭遇强力监管打压而非稳固成全新资产品类。

资本给出的最终导向

资金不再单纯因为项目披上加密外衣就给予溢价。资本青睐可以实打实完成资金划转、清算交易、满足监管要求、嵌入机构业务流程的企业。

稳定币成为风投切入链上金融的核心滩头阵地；最大红利未必属于代币发行方，而是掌控钱包、支付卡、企业资金管理、收银结算、信贷入口的渠道方。

预测市场已经从小众新奇品类升级为可投金融赛道，但政策抗风险能力偏弱；增长上限不只看用户规模，更取决于风控监管、市场公平机制、牌照资质。

链上信贷依托知名分销合作方获得机构信任，让 Morpho 这类协议有机会成长为底层基础设施，但代币收益分配难题不会自动化解。

加密风投下一阶段走势由退出渠道决定，而非空洞口号。如果 SpaceX 以及一众拟上市企业顺利完成 IPO，加密风投的复利增长可以延续；若上市窗口再度收紧，当下所谓的 “超级周期”，只会变成少数顶尖企业的单独估值修复行情。