20 projects raised $1.26 billion this week, led by Bullish ($1.1B) and 1Kosmos ($57M), while ALT5 Sigma, Heritage Distilling, Safety Shot, and Mill City Ventures announced $1.77 billion in digital asset treasury allocations. Offchain Labs acquired ZeroDev, expanding its smart account infrastructure portfolio. Daniel Barabander outlined a path for stablecoins to reach mainstream U.S. payments, Zackary Skelly shared midyear crypto hiring trends, and Guy Wuollet detailed how TradFi can integrate blockchains to enhance efficiency and growth. Here’s the breakdown of this week’s top deals and insights.
VC CT: Daniel Barabanderdetailed a path for stablecoins to reach mainstream U.S. payments via niche adoption and network aggregation; Zackary Skellyreported on H1 crypto hiring trends; and Guy Wuolletexamined how TradFi institutions can integrate blockchains as core infrastructure to drive efficiency and growth.
Notable Deals
20 projects collectively raised $1.26 billion this week. Here are the ten that stood out:
In recent months, digital asset treasury activity has accelerated, with corporate and structured vehicles increasingly accumulating tokens at scale. Here are notable examples from the past week:
ALT5 Sigma
The Pitch: ALT5 Sigma (Nasdaq: ALTS) plans to raise $1.5 billion through the sale of 200 million new and existing shares. The funds will be used to purchase approximately 7.5% of the total supply of WLFI, the native token of a Trump-backed DeFi platform built on an Aave V3-based lending market.
Round: $1.5 billion Registered Direct Offering and Concurrent Private Placement
The Pitch: Heritage Distilling (Nasdaq: CASK) established a treasury strategy ($100 million in cash and $120 million in IP tokens) focused on IP, the native token of the Story network. This transaction marks Heritage as the first Nasdaq-listed company to adopt IP as its primary reserve asset, while Story Foundation will use all net cash proceeds from the sale to repurchase IP tokens on the open market within 90 days.
Round: $220 million Private Investment in Public Equity (PIPE)
The Pitch: Safety Shot (Nasdaq: SHOT) acquired a 10% revenue stake in BONK.fun and, as part of the deal, received $25 million in BONK tokens for its treasury. Safety Shot will issue preferred shares convertible into common stock and reinvest about 90% of its BONK.fun revenue into BONK token purchases.
Round: $25 million private investment in public equity (PIPE)
Mill City Ventures
The Pitch: Mill City Ventures (Nasdaq: MCVT) expanded its SUI-focused treasury strategy with a $20 million purchase of 5.6 million SUI tokens at a slight discount to market, following its earlier $450 million private placement of SUI.
Round: $20 million Private Token Sale
M&A Activity
Offchain Labs acquired ZeroDev
Offchain Labs, the developer of Arbitrum, acquiredZeroDev, a provider of smart account infrastructure powering over 5 million accounts across more than 30 EVM-compatible chains. Founded in 2022, ZeroDev played a key role in bringing Ethereum’s ERC-4337 account abstraction standard to production and has since developed technologies such as modular smart accounts, session keys, and chain-abstracted accounts. Its platform is used by projects including Crossmint, DeFi.app, DIMO, and Infinex. ZeroDev will maintain multichain support while expanding its product suite under the Offchain Labs umbrella.
Argued that stablecoins can achieve mainstream U.S. consumer payment adoption by first gaining traction in niche markets through superior convenience or incentives, then connecting these fragmented use cases into an open, standardized, participant-owned network.
Shared H1 2025 crypto hiring trends with steady demand for engineering and data science, volatile GTM roles, strong interest in infrastructure and stablecoins, emerging geographic hubs, and signs of a rebound.
Outlined how banks, asset managers, and fintechs can integrate blockchains as core infrastructure, highlighting strategic considerations across tokenization, settlement, custody, privacy, and network design to improve efficiency, expand markets, and future-proof traditional finance.
Quick Recap
Total Deals: 20
Total Raised: $1.26B
Digital Asset Treasuries: $1.77B
Acquisitions: 1
Newly Launched Funds: 0
That’s a wrap for this week’s Crypto Venture Weekly. Thanks for tuning in, and see you next week!
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Jake is a Research Analyst on the Protocol Research team. He previously worked as an Investment Analyst at an AI-driven crypto research platform and as a Venture Analyst at a digital assets venture fund. He advised multiple RWA tokenization projects on tokenomics. Jake graduated from the University of Southern California, where he studied Philosophy and Finance.
Alice is a Research Analyst on the Protocol Services team. She previously worked as a Research Analyst at The Block and was an Investment Intern at Variant Fund. Alice graduated from Northwestern University, where she studied Economics.
Jake is a Research Analyst on the Protocol Research team. He previously worked as an Investment Analyst at an AI-driven crypto research platform and as a Venture Analyst at a digital assets venture fund. He advised multiple RWA tokenization projects on tokenomics. Jake graduated from the University of Southern California, where he studied Philosophy and Finance.
Alice is a Research Analyst on the Protocol Services team. She previously worked as a Research Analyst at The Block and was an Investment Intern at Variant Fund. Alice graduated from Northwestern University, where she studied Economics.
