The crypto industry capital headlines for 2025 look like a comeback story: $50.6 billion on 1,409 trades, a significant increase from 2024 totals.
However, this composition tells a different story.
According to the annual crypto funding report, 43.7% of that funding came from just 21 mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Traditional venture capital and private investments accounted for $23.3 billion in 829 deals, while public sales and IPOs accounted for $5.2 billion in 155 deals.
The gap between headings and segmentation is important. In 2025, funding would not flood into thousands of new crypto experiments.
Nearly half of the dollars were consolidated, with the winners purchasing infrastructure, competitive, distribution, and compliance assets. The total number of contracts decreased by 12.6% from the previous year, from 1,612 in 2024 to 1,409 in 2025.
The report directly quantifies that impact. M&A accounted for 83% of year-over-year capital growth, despite a decline in the number of funding rounds.
Why do the numbers diverge and what can we learn from them?
Multiple trackers reported different totals for 2025, but the discrepancy is not an error, just a range determination. Funding “reached more than $25 billion in 2025,” according to DefiLlama data.
DefiLlama’s methodology is explicitly focused on procurements related to tokens, stocks, or warrants, and lists exclusions (NFT sales, OTC transactions, market-making agreements).
Under this framework, it is natural that the focus will be on “funding” rather than “payment of acquisition consideration.”
Architect Partners, an advisory firm specializing in cryptocurrencies, reported that disclosed M&A consideration will reach $37 billion in 2025, 7.6 times the 2024 level, with the number of deals increasing 74% year-on-year.
The difference between $22.1 billion and $37 billion reflects different inclusion criteria. Reverse mergers, public shell transactions, and transactions involving non-crypto acquirers can dramatically change the total.
The point is not “who is right.” That means some trackers report equity and token rounds of funding, while others mix acquisition considerations with public market events.
That way, $25 billion and $50.6 billion can coexist without anyone lying.
Tracker/Dataset 2025 Headline Totals What we include What we tend to exclude/treat differently Impact (why is it low/high) Crypto Fundraise Report (crypto-fundraise.info) $50.6 BA of total “capital” categorized as VC/private, M&A, public sales/IPOs (i.e. not just raises). It’s not a “pure fundraising” lens. The total depends on the amount disclosed and your choice of splitting the report by transaction type. Consolidations and public market events are counted alongside VC-style funding, which drives headlines. It’s best suited for “where capital goes” rather than “VC raised.” DefiLlama raises “over $25 billion” (via DL News). Raise only datasets: Rounds containing tokens, shares, or warrants (funding event). It is not intended to capture M&A consideration and explicitly excludes categories such as NFT sales, OTC, and market-making agreements (which typically miss/avoid the value of acquisition-style transactions). The heading is low because the heading is low. This is closer to “traditional fundraising”, which is good for VC pace, but below consolidation and some public market flows. Architect Partners (Cryptocurrency M&A only) Measurement of consideration paid focusing on $37 billion disclosed consideration M&A. In many cases, there is a broader scope to what constitutes cryptocurrency M&A. It is not the total amount raised. May vary depending on whether reverse mergers, public shell transactions, and non-crypto asset acquirers purchasing crypto assets are included (scope may differ from other trackers). A higher M&A count than the M&A slice in the financing report if it includes more deal types or if the consideration is counted differently. Perfect for the “M&A cycle is back” argument.
Transactions are decreasing and checks are becoming more expensive.
The shift to concentration is noticeable. Even though total VC capital increased to $23.3 billion, the number of VC and private investment deals decreased by 21% from 1,050 in 2024 to 829 in 2025.
CryptoRank independently reported a similar pattern. The number of VC deals in 2025 was 1,179, down 29.6% year-over-year, but capital remained close to previous cycle levels. Average transaction value has skyrocketed.
Architect Partners added that rounds of $100 million or more account for more than half of all funds raised, with a small number of mega-rounds dominating.
This is a typical late-stage revenue dynamic that precedes or accelerates M&A. Fewer shots on goal and higher funding standards will encourage mid-major teams to acquire and roll up.
Category leaders respond by purchasing distribution, licensing, and compliance-ready infrastructure rather than building from scratch.
The 2025 data shows both sides of that dynamic convergence. This means fewer new companies receiving funding and more money going into acquisitions of companies that have already cleared regulatory, technology, or market access hurdles.
Funding will tell us what will become of cryptocurrencies
The Crypto Fundraising Report’s category breakdown is a roadmap of where the industry is headed.
The top VC categories by capital were Finance/Banking ($4.74 billion), Payments ($2.82 billion), Infrastructure ($2.61 billion), and Asset Management ($1.48 billion).
Layer 1 blockchain funding is down year-over-year, supporting the hypothesis that the market is moving from “building new chains” to “building institutional rails on top of existing chains.”
Stablecoin supply reached $311 billion in mid-January 2026, and tokenized U.S. Treasuries are approaching $10 billion, up from about $2.5 billion a year ago. These are not speculative bets, but infrastructure efforts that require payment licenses, compliance frameworks, and traditional financial plumbing.
The influx of funds into the financial/banking and payments categories reflects the industry’s center of gravity shifting from a decentralization narrative to payments infrastructure that existing banks and asset managers can connect to.
The infrastructure sector’s $2.61 billion also tells a story of consolidation. Infrastructure does not mean “new consensus mechanisms”. This means storage, key management, compliance software, onramps, and tokenization platforms.
Winners are buying infrastructure.
Architect Partners has positioned 2025 as the year when traditional financial services will start entering virtual currencies through “bridge M&A.” Bridge M&A is an acquisition that allows an incumbent company to skip the construction phase and buy regulatory clarity, user base, or technology stack entirely.
The 74% increase in the number of deals and 7.6x increase in public consideration shows that M&A is not just a mega deal, but also a broader wave of smaller strategic acquisitions.
Polygon’s acquisition strategy illustrates that pattern. The company has explicitly acquired payments and infrastructure companies to target stablecoin payments in a regulatory context.
This is not because Polygon lacks technical talent, but because buying existing relationships with regulators, banks, and payment processors is faster than negotiating from the beginning.
This playbook is replicable across custody, intermediation, trading infrastructure, and tokenization platforms.
The 21 M&A deals totaling $22.1 billion were not evenly distributed. A small number of very large deals dominated, as is often the case when the acquirer is a publicly traded company or a well-capitalized private company that uses stock as currency.
The IPO window being open until 2025 means acquirers had the valuation support and liquidity to use equity in transactions, increasing M&A activity beyond what pure cash consideration would allow.
What will happen in 2026?
Three scenarios frame different outcomes for 2026.
The base case assumes selective growth and steady accumulation. M&A volumes will normalize to the disclosed range of $15 billion to $30 billion, with deal numbers remaining stable or increasing slightly. At the same time, VC capital has remained flat to slightly higher in dollar terms, but flat or declining in terms of deal numbers.
This scenario confirms the continuation of the “less deals, bigger checks” regime.
In the bullish case, we assume that traditional financial entry triggers bridge M&A. M&A will accelerate from $30 billion to $50 billion, driven by payments, brokerage, custody and compliance software acquisitions, while the IPO window remains open.
Regulatory clarity around stablecoins will accelerate this path as it increases the value of payments infrastructure and custody businesses and reduces acquisition risks.
The bearish case assumes that the window will close. While large deals will decline due to higher financing costs and risk-off conditions, M&A will fall below $15 billion due to an increase in down rounds and structured finance replacing clean exits.
Three indicators to watch are whether IPO windows and public crypto multiples continue to rise, whether regulatory clarity around payments and stablecoins accelerates railroad M&A, and whether deal concentration metrics continue to rise.
Infrastructure theory is not ideological
The 2025 capital data does not prove whether cryptocurrencies “win” or “lose.” This proves that the industry is specializing in a way that favors integration over experimentation.
The signs are clear when nearly half of capital is spent on acquisitions and the categories attracting the most VC funding are payments, banking, and infrastructure. The market is betting on cryptocurrencies not as a parallel economy, but as financial plumbing.
The shift from 1,612 trades in 2024 to 1,409 in 2025, combined with increased capital, indicates a concentration of capital into fewer and larger bets.
This is the macro background of the rapid increase in M&A. Buyers are more confident about which features are important, and sellers have fewer alternatives if they can’t raise another round or achieve profitability on their own.
The result is a market in which exit through acquisition is the primary outcome for midsize companies and category leaders use M&A to accelerate rather than build.
Cryptocurrencies raised $50.6 billion in 2025. But this story isn’t about headlines, it’s about segmentation.
Thousands of experimental projects received no capital back. It was geared toward winning consolidation, infrastructure strategy, and strategic roll-ups.
It’s not a collapse. That’s maturity. And that’s what happens when any industry stops being speculative and starts becoming structural.
