Thread by @dantwany

1/ Q1′ 21 was a historical quarter in venture funding for the crypto/blockchain sector, with roughly $3.18 billion allocated to crypto/blockchain projects. 2021 is on track to surpass 2018 as the largest year in private funding for the industry. A thread:
theblockcrypto.com/genesis/100474…

2/ For perspective on how insane private investment in the sector was this quarter, in all of 2020 in aggregate, there was less total funding with $3.07 billion in private financing than just this recent quarter.

3/ Compared to 2018, the sector’s most significant funding year in its history with $5.77 billion in private funding, the first quarter has already accounted for more than half of that total or approximately 55% of the total private investment in 2018.

4/ Five deals this quarter qualified as one of the fifteenth largest crypto/blockchain funding deals of all time, all occurring in March. These include the raises by BlockFi, Dapper Labs, Blockchain.com, NYDIG, and Bitpanda.

5/ The $305 million funding round by Dapper Labs not only qualified it as the third-largest blockchain funding deal of all time but valued the firm at roughly $2 billion, which makes it the first crypto unicorn in the Gaming/NFT space.

6/ The deal frequency of larger-sized rounds also picked up significantly. Throughout the quarter, 14 investment rounds raised $50 million or more. Before this quarter, from 2018–2020, only 13 crypto/blockchain firms raised $50 million or more.

7/ Larger-sized deals are predominately being driven by the Crypto Financial Services Vertical. Of the deals that were at least $50 million or greater in size, roughly 57% fell under this vertical. Subsequently, this vertical had the most funding receiving roughly $1.6 billion.

8/ Of recent, one of the fastest-growing verticals within the industry has been the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) space. This vertical had the second most investment with $444.3 million. From February to March, investment in the vertical went parabolic, increasing by roughly 568%

9/ Decentralized Finance (DeFi) continues to be a popular vertical amongst investors, roughly 26% of the private investment rounds that occurred this quarter were DeFi-related projects.

10/ Although DeFi had the most number of deals, their deals on average tended to be smaller in scale, with the smallest deal size on average out of the eight verticals. This is consistent with private rounds and smaller deals at higher valuations being commonplace.

11/ If you enjoyed this thread, check out our full report, which goes into more detail, and we will also be releasing Part ll that will highlight the most active investors this quarter.