Cryptoverse: Venture capitalists catch crypto fever

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Scared of being left in the digital dust, private equity investors are stampeding towards crypto projects — blockchain-based apps and platforms fuelled by cryptocurrencies that are native to the virtual economies of the metaverse and Web3. VC investment in such projects totalled $10 billion globally in the first quarter of this year, the largest quarterly sum ever and more than double the level seen in the same period a year ago, according to data from Pitchbook.

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A trickle has become a torrent: the full-year totals for 2019, 2020 and 2021 were $3.7 billion, $5.5 billion and $28 billion. «You're seeing a lot of VC investment into a lot of protocols because they all believe, as we do, that some of these protocols are the infrastructure of the future,» said Steve Ehrlich, CEO of crypto brokerage firm Voyager Digital. Such projects, which can range from crypto and NFT exchanges to decentralized finance applications and token issuers, are often known as protocols in reference to the rules embedded in their computer code. The recent action is different from the past when venture investment levels tended to track the price of bitcoin, albeit with a short delay, according to Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at blockchain-focused bank Galaxy Digital in New York. Investment levels in crypto have continued to grow during a bitcoin price slump this year — it's down about 16% — as well as during another decline last summer, Thorn notes. «This decoupling is demonstrative of investors' disbelief that a prolonged bear market in digital assets is