- Crypto startups pulled just over $18 million from venture capitalists this week.
- But fundamentals are better than ever, VCs say.
Things are looking brutal.
The $2 trillion crypto industry wipeout has decimated market sentiment. Bitcoin is down 47% from its October peak — with market watchers expecting more pain to come.
Other top crypto assets have fallen even more, with Ethereum trading at a 60% discount and Solana 73%.
Indeed, crypto startups raised just $18.5 million this week, DefiLlama data shows.
That’s the worst week since the New Year holiday break and one of the leanest periods over the past two years.
Yet the massacre is not changing frontier investors’ minds about the fledgling industry, venture capitalists say.
“The fundamentals of blockchain companies have actually strengthened,” Charlie Sandor, partner at venture capital firm CMT Digital, told DL News.
“What we’ve seen change is how future token outcomes are being valued, which has brought valuations down for projects with token outcomes where expectations were previously priced much higher,” Sandor said.
Sandor said that he expects deal terms to “stay measured” with money going to projects with “real usage and revenue.”
Here are the top three raises this week.
Bullshot, $7.5 million
Bullshot, an artificial intelligence-powered meme token launchpad built on the BNB Chain, announced it raised $7.5 million in a private round backed by Animoca Brands and Genesis Capital as well as other investors.
The platform uses automation to enable one-click token creation, lowering technical barriers for issuers. It also incorporates what it describes as anti-bot protections designed to curb predatory trading behaviour.
Bullshot says it has facilitated the launch of more than 70,000 tokens, reflecting sustained appetite for fair-launch meme assets within the BNB ecosystem.
Levl, $7 million
Swiss-based Levl, a stablecoin infrastructure provider spun out of Galaxy Digital, closed a $7 million seed round led by Galaxy Ventures, Fortune reported.
The firm offers a unified platform connecting traditional banking rails with blockchain-based settlement, enabling instant global payments using fiat and stablecoins such as USDC.
With regulatory approvals in Switzerland and Canada, Levl said it had an annualised transaction volume exceeding $1 billion within four months of launch.
Birch Hill Holdings, $2.5 million
New York-based Birch Hill Holdings secured $2.5 million in a pre-seed round co-led by ParaFi Capital and Castle Island Ventures.
Founded by former structured credit and risk professionals from Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, the firm is building institutional-grade infrastructure for on-chain lending and real-world asset tokenisation.
Its proprietary product is a collateral risk framework designed to provide fiduciaries with auditable oversight and governance standards tailored to decentralised credit markets.
You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.
Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at lance@dlnews.com.
