Investors invested more money in crypto projects and companies in the first half of 2022 than in all of 2021. Research firm Messari came up with this finding. Mind you, this is not about buying bitcoin or another crypto, but about fundraising.
$30.3 Billion Raised Through Cryptocurrency Projects
Messari released a report called Messari’s H1 2022 Fundraising Report. It states that the crypto industry has raised $30.3 billion in the first half of the year. That is more than the whole of 2021. Instinctively, this is at odds with where the market is moving, since the bitcoin price has had to drop significantly this year.
But the numbers don’t lie, and this shows that investor confidence in crypto and blockchain technology remains high and has not been affected by the cryptocurrency prices.
Cryptocurrency divided by four
Messari has classified the investments into four categories:
- DeFi has raised $1.8 billion. Think of projects like Uniswap
- Web3 & NFTs have raised $8.6 billion.
- Infrastructure has raised $9.7 billion. Think of wallets and payment providers.
- CeFi has raised 10.2 billion. These are the traditional exchanges like Binance.
Messari has compiled the report together with Dove Metrics. The latter has been taken over by Messari and could be described as a fundraising database.
Cryptocurrency Investment Funds
Above we mainly talked about investments in companies that build cryptocurrency. But the investment funds themselves have also raised a lot of money. Added together, these raised $35.9 billion in the first half of 2022, well exceeding the $19 billion of 2021.
Investments in the crypto industry often focus on companies that are really still in the early stages. This suggests that investors are mainly betting on enormous potential that may only unfold in the distant future.
Dominating Crypto Exchanges
Centralized exchanges (think Coinbase-like companies) brought in $3.2 billion in the first half. Exchanges remain the most dominant factor in the crypto industry as this is where the real money is made.
In the first half, we saw a number of crypto funds, lenders and other companies fall. In theory, this should affect all major exchanges, but none have really been affected. In fact, the centralized crypto exchange FTX has actually tried to help falling crypto companies afloat with bags full of money. It is therefore not surprising that investors are only too happy to gamble on centralized exchanges.
Price drop does not affect confidence
In summary, the report shows that the market crash of May and June has not damaged confidence in the sector. In none of the four categories mentioned has the volume of investment fallen sharply after May.
