Vc Roundup: Big Money, Few Deals As Crypto Venture Funding Dries Up

Crypto venture funding was weak in November, with only a few major raises driving totals, as overall deal activity reached one of its lowest points this year.

Venture capital funding in the cryptocurrency sector remained muted in November, continuing a broader slowdown that has persisted through late 2025. Deal activity was once again concentrated in a small number of large raises by established companies.

As Cointelegraph previously reported, the third quarter saw a similar pattern: total funding climbed to $4.65 billion, according to Galaxy Digital, but deal counts lagged as capital flowed primarily to bigger, more mature firms.

November reflected the same divergence. Figures from RootData showed only 57 disclosed crypto funding rounds during the month — one of the weakest tallies of the year — despite headline-grabbing raises such as Revolut’s $1 billion round and Kraken’s $800 million raise ahead of its anticipated initial public offering.

According to RootData, the majority of deals in November were in the centralized finance, decentralized finance, and NFT–GameFi sectors.

While some of the slowdown in deal volume can be attributed to broader market conditions, the trend poses longer-term risks, said Sarah Austin, co-founder of the real-world-asset gaming platform Titled. “Ultimately, this has a negative consequence on the entire industry because investing in tough times is when the best deals are made,” she told Cointelegraph.

The latest edition of VC Roundup highlights just three funding deals across the decentralized perpetuals, onchain-yield and Web3–AI sectors.

Ostium, a decentralized perpetuals platform founded by former Harvard classmates, has raised $24 million in new funding to scale its onchain perpetuals protocol across non-crypto markets such as stocks, commodities, indexes and currencies.

The raise supports the company’s broader push to position Ostium as a leading perpetuals protocol for real-world assets, expanding access to traditional markets through self-custodial infrastructure.

Ostium said the capital will go toward strengthening its underlying systems, including smart contracts, pricing infrastructure and liquidity engines, to support higher trading volumes.

Source: CoinTelegraph