Galaxy reported crypto venture funding dropped 50% quarter-over-quarter to $4 billion, though activity stayed stronger than previous bear-market levels.
Crypto venture capital activity slowed in Q1 2026 following the exceptionally strong pace recorded in Q4 2025, according to a new report from Galaxy Digital.
Venture firms invested roughly $4 billion across 355 crypto and blockchain-focused deals during the quarter, which is a 50% decline in capital invested quarter-over-quarter and a 16% drop in deal count.
VC Market Loses Steam
Despite the pullback, activity remained well above many of the quarterly levels seen during the 2023-2024 market downturn. Galaxy Research found that the decline was driven mainly by the absence of the very large later-stage financings seen in Q4 2025, while smaller seed and early-stage rounds continued to close at a relatively steady pace.
If annualized, Q1’s pace would imply approximately $16 billion invested during 2026, below 2025’s nearly $20 billion total but still stronger than much of the previous two years. The historical relationship between Bitcoin prices and crypto venture investing has weakened compared with earlier cycles in 2017 and 2021. While Bitcoin reached new highs in late 2025, venture activity remained uneven, and both Bitcoin prices and venture funding declined in Q1 2026, though the drop in invested capital was more severe than the decline in deal activity.
Later-stage startups accounted for the majority of funding during the quarter, as this cohort captured roughly 57% of all invested capital, while earlier-stage companies received the remaining 43%. By deal count, however, early-stage activity remained significant, even as the share of pre-seed deals declined to 19% and later-stage transactions rose to one-quarter of completed deals.
Galaxy said that this trend indicates the growing maturity of the crypto industry and the increasing presence of larger, revenue-generating companies.
Meanwhile, median crypto deal sizes also reached new all-time highs above $4.5 million in Q1 2026, even as valuations pulled back slightly from the record levels reached in Q4 2025.
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Among the sectors tracked by Galaxy Research, the Trading/Exchange/Investing/Lending category attracted the most venture funding by a wide margin after raising roughly $2.6 billion, or nearly three-fifths of all capital invested during the quarter. The same category also led in deal count with 74 transactions.
Wallet startups ranked second in capital raised with roughly $270 million. Galaxy also found that startups founded in 2018 received the largest amount of capital in Q1 at $1.3 billion, while younger startups founded in 2024 and 2025 dominated overall deal count.
US Leads Crypto Deals
Geographically, the United States continued to dominate crypto venture activity, as it accounted for over 70% of all invested capital and 43.5% of total deals completed during the quarter. Bahrain and Singapore followed the US in capital share, while the United Kingdom ranked second by deal count.
On the fundraising side, investors allocated nearly $1.1 billion to eight new crypto-focused venture funds, the fewest new funds launched in a quarter since Q3 2020.
Galaxy said fundraising conditions remain difficult due to macroeconomic pressures, lingering effects from the 2022-2023 crypto market turmoil, growing institutional interest in artificial intelligence, and competition from spot crypto ETFs and digital asset treasury companies for investor capital.
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