Crunchbase: Venture capital in the crypto space reached nearly $1.9 billion in Q1, the first quarterly increase since 2021

Venture capital funding for cryptocurrency and blockchain projects just experienced its first quarterly growth since 2021, according to data released today by Crunchbase. In the first quarter of 2024, Web3 startups raised nearly $1.9 billion across 346 deals, up 58% from the last quarter of 2023. But the overall downward trend in venture capital interest in cryptocurrencies continues, down 17% from the first quarter of last year, with about half the number of deals. The report's author, Chris Metinko, said that recent investors investing in Web3 are more inclined to "invest for the long term," in contrast to some of the hype-chasing "tourist investors" that have been more popular in the past few years. "They may be in the field of artificial intelligence," he added. "You're seeing investments in the underlying infrastructure of the decentralized internet, not the crypto wallets and lenders we saw in the heyday of 2021-2022," Metinko explained. (Fortune)