I was refilling my mug—three shots of espresso, no regrets—when the telegram chat lit up with the headline: “June crypto funding > $1.5B, strongest month since March 2025.” Somebody on the desk yelled, “Called it!” and the rest of us just smirked. We’ve been watching the Series A wires like hawks since ETH broke through $3K. When venture money starts front-running the spot market, that’s usually our cue to pay closer attention to the illiquid stuff hiding under the hood.
Here’s What Actually Happened
DeFiLlama’s tracker shows $1.52 billion in fresh capital deployed into crypto startups between June 1 and June 20. That’s already 2.3× May’s entire haul and easily tops anything we’ve seen since that manic March 2025, right before the Fed decided to get cute with the dot plot. The desk has a running joke that TradFi VCs only open their checkbooks when Powell stops talking—June’s numbers tell me they’re finally tuning him out.
Breakdown looks roughly like this (rounded, because decimal dust bores everyone):
- $550M into infrastructure (LayerZero’s eye-watering $400M expansion round did the heavy lifting there).
- $380M into consumer-facing apps—Farcaster’s $150M alone reminded me why we never fade a good social narrative rally.
- $310M toward DeFi protocols—Flashbots’ $60M raise actually counts as “middleware,” but we all know their MEV auctions basically grease the entire on-chain AMM machine.
- $280M sprinkled across gaming, identity (shout-out to Humanity Protocol closing $30M seed), and smaller security plays.
Keep in mind this tally doesn’t even include late-stage commitments like Circle’s potential IPO proceeds. Word on the street is they’re eyeing a $9B–$10B valuation again, finally shaking off that aborted SPAC fiasco from ’22. If the S-1 drops before month-end, June’s real number will pop above $2B without breaking a sweat.
Why the Circle Buzz Feels Different This Time
In ’22 the desk passed on the USDC issuer’s pre-SPAC secondary because the cap table looked like a clown car—too many strategic investors, not enough operational elbow room. Now, with MiCA getting finalized in the EU and Treasury floating a stablecoin bill that actually has bipartisan legs, Circle’s regulatory overhang is lighter than my weekend bag. VCs are reading the same tea leaves. A clean IPO path keeps them from tying up capital in a private round at the mercy of secondary desk vultures. Instead, they can hit the public market exit within 12–18 months. Lower duration risk, higher IRR—no-brainer.
But Is the Money Smart—or Just Fast?
Here’s where I get spicy. We’re seeing huge checks, but not always at rational marks. Monad raised $225M at a reported $2B pre-money for an EVM-compatible L1 that hasn’t shipped mainnet. I love high-throughput toys as much as the next degen, but we’ve been rugged by "ETH-killer" PPT decks since 2017. The difference now? Liquid mktcaps of the big L1s are $20B+. So paying 2B for a maybe pipeline doesn’t look insane if you believe BTC is heading for six-figures on another macro rotation.
Still, I’d rather echo what our quant Dave likes to chant when he’s hedging options: “Pay for delta, not for dreams.” Translation—allocate to teams with tangible revenue or at least on-chain usage metrics. Farcaster’s DAU chart resembles a crypto bull flag more than a Silicon Valley hockey stick, but at least there is a chart. That’s worth something.
The Bigger Backdrop: Rates, ETFs, and the Summer Liquidity Trap
You can’t talk funding without eyeballing macro. The 10-year has been stuck around 4.25 % and equities keep grinding all-time highs. Cash is piled everywhere because nobody wants to pick the top during election season. Those dollars have to go somewhere, and crypto’s still the only asset class where a 10× in 24 months isn’t laughed out of the room.
Spot ETH ETF approvals (likely by early July) are the other elephant. BlackRock and Fidelity grabbing inventory means secondary market squeezes and a stronger narrative tailwind. VCs want their portfolio tokens liquid before that pump, so they’re accelerating deals now. We’ve already priced optionality on a few private SAFEs that convert at 20 % discount to next round. If ETH’s ETF hype plays out, next-round valuations leapfrog and our paper goes green right out of the gate.
Where We’re Putting Chips on the Table
Not all of us can wire $50M checks like a16z, but allocations on the desk this month included:
- Flashbots Series C—pure picks-and-shovels play. If blockspace is gold, MEV protection’s the shovel.
- Backpack Exchange—Sam Bankman-Fried PTSD makes centralized exchange bets tricky, but this team’s custody model is segregated on-chain. We took a flyer.
- Mellow Finance—restaking protocols feel toppy, yet LSDfi is printing. A small seed for asymmetric upside.
I passed on LayerZero’s mega-round. Love the tech, hated the fully-diluted value at >$8B pre-token. Could be egg on my face, but discipline matters more than Twitter clout.
So What Now?
If you’re retail and thinking, “Great, the suits are back, does that mean I’m late?”—relax. The cheap seed rounds were Q3 ’23 when nobody wanted to say the word crypto on CNBC. But whales writing $150M checks at $2B caps doesn’t preclude outsized returns for liquid traders. Think of VC momentum as forward guidance: If they’re confident enough to mark 9-figure tickets, they’ll defend narrative dips on the way up. That gives swing traders solid levels to lean against.
Watch for lock-up periods and token generation events. Token unlock calendars are basically public insider trading schedules. Front-run the airdrop hype, then duck out before the coastal elites dump on you six months later. Standard playbook.
Final Takeaway Before the Closing Bell
I’ve noticed every real bull begins with private capital shaking off its risk allergy. June’s $1.5B—and counting—tells me we’re officially back in warm-blooded territory. Could we still get blindsided by a policy rug or a Macro Monday meltdown? Sure. But from where we sit, the upside skew on fresh crypto equity has rarely looked this juicy since pre-Covid.
Bottom line: Big money’s moving again. If you wait for CNBC to confirm it, you’ll be paying the top.
