Crypto Companies Raise Record-Breaking $6.5B in Q3 2021

Venture funding for blockchain companies between July and September 2021 hit an all-time high of $6.5 billion in 339 rounds–and that’s in disclosed deals only, according to recent research from Blockdata.
This is the third consecutive record this year, with $3.83 billion and $5.131 billion raised in Q1 and Q2, respectively.
Notably, the latest numbers are almost double the total amount raised throughout all of 2020, when VC funds invested $3.8 billion in crypto companies.
Helmed by 29-year-old billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto exchange FTX closed a whopping $900 million Series B funding round in July, which brought the company’s valuation to $18 billion.
Over 60 investors, including Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures, participated in the biggest round in the industry’s history.
As it was reported at the time, the funds were to be used for various mergers and acquisitions. Shortly after, FTX.US, the exchange’s U.S. affiliate, announced its plans to acquire LedgerX, a crypto derivatives trading platform regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Sorare, a fast-growing fantasy soccer game based on Ethereum NFT cards, raised $680 million in September at a valuation of $4.3 billion. The Series B round was led by Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank, which previously funded several other crypto companies as well.
Currently, Sorare’s NFT game features over 200 licensed soccer clubs, including FC Barcelona, Juventus FC, Paris Saint-Germain FC, and Liverpool FC, as well as players representing the United States’ Major League Soccer Players Association.

Genesis Digital Assets–an American Bitcoin mining firm–closed a $431 million funding round led by Paradigm, with participation from New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), and FTX among others.
For Genesis Digital, this was the second round in Q3. In July the company raised $125 million from the UK-based investment management firm Kingsway Capital.
Armed with a solid war chest, Genesis Digital is now eyeing an aggressive expansion. The company said that it expected to reach a data center capacity of 1.4 gigawatts by the end of 2023, an eight-fold increase from its capacity in September 2021.
Fireblocks, a New York-based company that provides digital asset custody, transfer, and settlement infrastructure for clients including banks and exchanges, raised $310 million in July. The Series D funding was co-led by Sequoia Capital, Stripes, Spark Capital, Coatue, DRW VC and SCB 10X, and brought the firm’s valuation to $2 billion.
Prior to that, in March, Fireblocks raised $133 million in Series C, with the firm’s major clients SVB Capital and BNY Mellon among the investors.
Despite the capital raised, Fireblocks is in no hurry to go public, with the firm’s CEO Michael Shaulov telling Decrypt in August that first “we need an infrastructure that removes the complexities around security, compliance, and operational risk.”

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