Monthly venture deal count in crypto fell to roughly 50 deals in May, a level last seen in the pre-2021 era when the industry was a fraction of its current size.
The compression is visible across nearly every category in the chart, with Infrastructure and Crypto Financial Services, historically the two most active buckets, both tracking near multi-year lows.
The decline reflects a combination of factors. Investor attention has broadly shifted toward AI, pulling capital and mindshare away from crypto ventures at a structural level. Simultaneously, the crypto space has struggled to produce the volume of compelling early-stage opportunities that characterized the 2021 and 2024 cycles.
Expand Chart
Deal count tells one part of the story while dollar volume tells another. Despite the slowdown in deal activity, funding totals have remained somewhat elevated. Prediction market platform Kalshi's $1 billion raise is a recent example of how capital concentration is playing out: fewer deals, but larger checks when a category-defining company emerges.
