How Blockchain is Outgrowing Fintech in 2025

In the early 2020s, low interest rates did more than boost housing and stocks. They turned venture capital into a firehose. Startups popped up overnight, valuations soared, and blockchain rode the wave harder than most.

When rates spiked in 2022 and 2023, the party ended. Deal counts collapsed, and many assumed blockchain’s run was over.

But here is the truth in 2025: blockchain has moved past the bubble. Deals are fewer, checks are larger, and the category is growing faster than fintech and the venture industry overall.

2025 Blockchain Funding at a Glance

Through September, U.S.-based blockchain startups have raised $3.9B across 190 deals. That is below the mania of 2021 but stronger than the trough years of 2023 and 2024.

The shift shows up most clearly in deal sizes:

• Median deal size: $6M (record high, up 50 percent year over year)
• Average deal size: $23.7M (up 78 percent year over year)

Translation: fewer founders are raising, but those who break through are securing larger checks. It is a sign of investor conviction, not just survival.

Compared with fintech as a whole, blockchain medians are now higher. This shows that capital is not just trickling in, it is concentrating in startups that can prove value in a tougher environment.

The Conviction Era

Venture capital has shifted from a spray-and-pray model to one defined by concentration. The free-flowing capital of 2021 created inflated deal counts and shallow diligence. In 2025, investors are looking for signals of durability before they write a check.

• Deal counts peaked in 2021, then fell sharply as interest rates rose.
• Total funding dropped, but not nearly as steeply.
• Investors concentrated capital into fewer startups with clear traction.

Blockchain makes this shift especially visible. With only 190 deals so far this year, activity is just off last year’s pace, yet total dollars raised are holding steady. That means investors are deliberately backing fewer companies but are willing to double or triple down on those they believe in.

This is not just a blockchain story. It is a venture-wide reset. But blockchain acts as a magnifying glass: the peaks were higher, the troughs were deeper, and the bounce is sharper. For founders, it is proof that while activity may be down, conviction is up — and that conviction is what matters most.

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Why the Macro Matters: Fed Policy and Capital Flows

Every funding cycle has a trigger. In venture, that trigger is usually monetary policy. When capital is cheap, investors fund experiments. When capital is expensive, they tighten focus.

The last decade makes the connection crystal clear:

• 2015 to 2016: Rates near zero kept capital cheap, encouraging risk.
• 2017 to 2019: A steady climb to 2.4 percent cooled the market, though venture activity remained high.
• 2020 to 2021: Rates returned to near zero during the pandemic. This poured gasoline on the fire, creating record-breaking funding years. Blockchain deals alone jumped 2.5x in 2021.
• 2022 to 2023: The Fed raised rates from 0.25 percent to over 5 percent at the fastest pace in decades. Deal counts collapsed. Blockchain fell from 1,060 deals in 2022 to 387 in 2024.
• 2024 to 2025: Rates remain high but stable. Funding has leveled off. Deal counts are muted, but median deal sizes are at record highs as investors filter for quality.

The lesson is simple: venture is not insulated from macro cycles. When the Fed moves, founders feel it.

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Stage Breakdown: Blockchain vs. Fintech vs. Venture

Stage distribution tells us where conviction is flowing. In 2025, blockchain is skewed early:

• Early stage: 78 percent
• Mid stage: 7 percent
• Late stage: less than 1 percent

By comparison, fintech and venture overall have more balance across stages, with late-stage rounds still representing a measurable share of total funding. Blockchain stands out for how little capital is flowing into late stage.

The historical view is even more telling. Since 2019, blockchain has always leaned younger than fintech or venture, but the gap has widened. The freeze at late stage is sharper in blockchain, underscoring how hard it is to raise large follow-on rounds without profitability or a path to exit.

For founders, this creates a double-edged sword. The early-stage appetite remains strong, but the bridge to growth capital is narrower than in fintech overall.

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Spotlight: Top 5 Funded Blockchain Startups of 2025

Beyond the macro numbers, five early-stage startups captured outsized attention this year. These companies show where conviction capital is flowing and highlight the diversity of innovation in blockchain.

1. Portal to Bitcoin ($50M Series A): Scaling Bitcoin into a true settlement layer for millions of markets.
2. Nous Research ($50M Series A): Bringing steerable, open-source AI into crypto infrastructure.
3. StarTower ($50M seed): Reinventing the crypto wallet as a Web3 wealth engine.
4. Etherealize ($40M Series A): Moving Wall Street onto Ethereum rails with tokenization and zk-privacy.
5. Courtyard ($30M Series A): Turning physical collectibles into digital, liquid assets.

These are not scattershot experiments. They represent focused plays in infrastructure, compliance, institutional finance, and consumer applications. Together, they show that investor conviction is following specialization and real-world utility.

👉 For a deeper dive, check out our blog post on The Top 5 Funded Blockchain Startups or download the full report.

Key Takeaways

This quarter’s data reinforces three big themes:

• Funding is more concentrated. Dollars are flowing into fewer startups, but the checks are bigger and conviction is higher.
• Blockchain is resilient. Median deal sizes are higher than fintech overall, showing strength even as activity slows.
• Macro sets the tempo. Interest rate cycles drive venture funding patterns, and blockchain is no exception.

The picture is clear: blockchain has moved beyond the hype cycle. It is no longer about whether the category will survive, but how fast it will mature compared to the rest of venture.

How We Collected and Analyzed the Data

To build this report, we started with raw data from:

1. Crunchbase State of Fintech Reports (2021–2024, including Q1 and Q2 2025)
2. Crunchbase State of Venture Reports (2021–2025, including Q1 and Q2 2025)

From there, we isolated the data most relevant to blockchain and crypto, including total dollars raised, number of deals, and stage distribution. We also pulled historical data going back to 2015, giving us a longer view of how funding in fintech and payments has evolved over the past decade. This perspective helps illustrate the rise, peak, and correction of the current venture market.

For the top companies of 2025 dataset, we focused on early-stage startups (angel, pre-seed, seed, Series A) based in the US.