Crypto Journalist
Amin Ayan
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Crypto venture capital showed a split personality in November 2025: deal activity slowed, but the money flowing into the sector ballooned.
Key Takeaways:
- Crypto VC deals fell sharply in November, but total funding jumped to $14 billion due to one mega-acquisition.
- Naver’s $10.3 billion purchase of Dunamu accounted for most of the month’s capital.
- Outside the blockbuster, investors focused on DeFi, AI, and infrastructure.
Data from RootData shows 57 disclosed crypto VC deals, down 28% from October and 41% from a year earlier.
However, total funding leapt to $14.54 billion, a 219% jump month over month, dominated by a single blockbuster transaction.
That outlier was Naver’s $10.3 billion all-stock acquisition of Dunamu, the operator of Upbit.
The deal, the largest financing event the crypto industry has seen, values Dunamu at about KRW 15.1 trillion and signals renewed appetite for scale through consolidation.
Dunamu reported revenue of KRW 1.19 trillion for the first nine months of the year, with Upbit accounting for nearly all of it, underscoring how trading platforms continue to anchor cash flows even as the market matures.
Strip away the Naver-Dunamu mega-deal and November looks more cautious. Capital clustered around fewer, larger checks while early-stage activity cooled.
By sector, DeFi (30.4%) and CeFi (12.5%) led deal counts, followed by AI (7.1%), RWA/DePIN (7.1%), and Tooling/Wallets (5.4%), suggesting investors are prioritizing infrastructure and finance-native use cases over consumer experiments.
Prediction-market operator Kalshi closed a $1 billion round led by Sequoia and CapitalG, vaulting to an $11 billion valuation, while talks swirled that rival Polymarket could seek a double-digit-billion price tag.
Payments heavyweight Ripple secured $500 million, lifting its valuation to $40 billion, with backing tied to Fortress and Citadel Securities alongside marquee crypto funds.
Kraken added $200 million at a $20 billion valuation after a $600 million raise earlier in the fall.
Market-infrastructure specialist Tharimmune lined up a $540 million private placement to hold Canton tokens for institutional workflows, while Bitcoin lender Lava raised $200 million to expand BTC-based instruments.
On the ecosystem side, L1 aspirant Monad pulled in $188 million via a public sale, wallet firm Exodus Movement struck a $175 million cash-and-BTC-financed acquisition for payments group W3C, and Lloyds agreed to buy Curve for roughly $158 million.
Custodian Paxos Trust Company capped the month by acquiring Fordefi in a deal topping $100 million.
Crypto VC Rebounds to $4.65B in Q3
As reported, crypto venture funding rebounded sharply in the third quarter, reaching $4.65 billion, the second-strongest quarter since the FTX collapse in late 2022.
The total marked a 290% jump from Q2 and came close to Q1’s $4.8 billion, according to data from Galaxy Digital.
Funding was heavily concentrated, with just seven deals accounting for half of all capital invested across 414 transactions.
The biggest raises went to established players, led by $1 billion for Revolut, $500 million for Kraken, and $250 million for Erebor, a US-based crypto bank.
Capital clustered around stablecoins, AI-linked crypto tools, infrastructure, and trading technology, while early-stage fundraising remained muted after nearly two years of cautious dealmaking.
