Crypto Venture Weekly: July 7-11, 2025

Introduction

If you missed it, Messari published its State of Crypto Fundraising report for Q2 2025. This pro report covers Q2's fundraising deals, accelerators, M&As, newly launched funds, top investors, and more. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

15 projects raised $109 million this week, led by Agora ($50M) and DigitalX ($13.5M), while OpenSea, Monad, and Coinbase made strategic acquisitions to expand their core product verticals. Ego Death Capital and Propel Venture Partners each launched $100 million funds focused on Bitcoin and early-stage fintech, respectively. Maria Shen outlined Ethereum’s potential as a global stablecoin settlement layer, Alex from Scimitar Capital analyzed intuition-driven trading, and Mason Nystrom forecasted a new DeFi cycle driven by attention markets and AI-native interfaces. Here’s the breakdown of this week’s top deals and insights.

Key Highlights

• Notable Deals: Agora ($50M), DigitalX ($13.5M), Kuru ($11.6M), Remix ($6.75M), Velvet Capital ($3.7M), and BridgePort ($3.2M).
• M&A Activity: OpenSea acquired Rally, Monad acquired Portal, Ondo Finance acquired Oasis Pro, Coinbase acquired Opyn Markets, and Camp Network acquired KOR Protocol.
• Funds: Ego Death Capital fund ($100M) and Propel Venture Partners Fund V ($100M) launched.
• VC CT: Maria Shen argued that Ethereum is poised to become the reserve layer for global stablecoins; Alex of Scimitar Capital explored how “thin slicing” informs trader intuition; and Mason Nystrom projected that attention-native apps and AI-augmented DeFi interfaces will drive the next wave of crypto adoption.

Notable Deals

15 projects collectively raised $109 million last week. Here are the six that stood out:

Agora

• The Pitch: Full-stack platform for stablecoin infrastructure and issuer of AUSD
• Round: $50 million Series A
• Investors: Led by Paradigm with participation from Dragonfly

DigitalX

• The Pitch: Australian digital investment manager
• Round: $13.5 million Strategic
• Investors: Animoca Brands, ParaFi Capital, UTXO Management, and more

Kuru

• The Pitch: Building a fully onchain CLOB on Monad
• Round: $11.6 million Series A
• Investors: Led by Paradigm with participation from Electric Capital, Credibly Neutral, Will Price, Tristan Yver, and more

Remix

• The Pitch: A mobile gaming platform and creation tool featuring more than 800 games and 500,000 users
• Round: $6.75 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Archetype with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Lemniscap, Variant, and more

Velvet Capital

• The Pitch: DeFAI trading and portfolio management infrastructure
• Round: $3.7 million funding
• Investors: YZi Labs, DWF Labs, SkyVision Capital, Rarestone Capital, Blockchain Founders Fund, Selini Capital, and more

BridgePort

• The Pitch: Institutional middleware for off-exchange settlement
• Round: $3.2 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Further Ventures with participation from Blockchain Founders Fund, FunFair Ventures, XBTO Ventures, and more

M&A Activity

OpenSea acquired Rally

OpenSea acquired Rally, a mobile-native onchain trading app, to accelerate its vision of becoming the definitive “onchain everything” platform. Rally’s team, known for its focus on mobile UX and token-centric experiences, will lead OpenSea’s mobile product efforts, with Rally co-founder Chris Maddern assuming the role of CTO. The acquisition aims to combine NFTs, tokens, and DeFi into a unified mobile interface, positioning OpenSea to expand beyond NFTs into broader onchain activity. While the Rally app will continue operating in the near term, it will ultimately be integrated into a reimagined OpenSea Mobile experience, slated for release in 2025.

Monad acquired Portal

Monad acquired Portal, a stablecoin infrastructure provider facilitating millions of dollars in daily settlement, to advance its onchain payments strategy. The deal brings Portal’s developer-focused payments toolkit and team into Monad’s high-performance Layer-1 ecosystem. Portal CEO Raj Parekh, formerly a founding member of Visa’s global crypto product, will join Monad as Head of Payments and Stablecoins to expand stablecoin adoption among issuers, developers, and enterprises. Portal will continue operating independently while accelerating integrations, compliance, and tooling to support global stablecoin usage.

Coinbase acquired Opyn

Coinbase acquired the leadership team of Opyn Markets, creators of the first DeFi options protocol, Power Perpetuals, and Squeeth. With deep expertise in both onchain systems and traditional market structure, the Opyn team will help accelerate Coinbase’s efforts to build advanced onchain markets infrastructure, including initiatives like Verified Pools. As part of this transition, the planned launch of Opyn Markets has been canceled.

Camp Network acquired KOR Protocol

Camp Network acquired a strategic stake in KOR Protocol to build infrastructure for tokenized intellectual property and real-time royalty enforcement. KOR, whose platform powers programmable licensing for artists, enables creators to tokenize IP, license derivatives, and track usage onchain. Camp’s Proof of Provenance protocol complements this by embedding rights logic and automating royalties at the execution layer. KOR will continue to operate independently, accelerating tooling for interoperable licensing and remixable content.

Other acquisitions include Coreweave acquiring Core Scientific, Adhara merging with ioBuilders, and pump.fun acquiring Kolscan.

Funds

Ego Death Capital – $100M

Ego Death Capital closed a $100 million fund to back early-stage startups building exclusively on Bitcoin. Targeting companies with $1-3 million in annual revenue, the fund focuses on Series A investments in exchanges, savings platforms, and Lightning-based payments infrastructure. Backed by family offices and institutional LPs, the fund reflects rising interest in Bitcoin-native applications amid renewed institutional demand. Ego Death Capital has already invested in Roxom, Relai, and Breez, and maintains a strict Bitcoin-only thesis, excluding hardware ventures and other crypto ecosystems.

Propel Venture Partners Fund V – $100M

Propel Venture Partners raised $100 million for Fund V, bringing its total capital to $436 million to continue backing seed-stage startups at the intersection of technology and financial services. The firm writes $1-4 million checks into pre-seed and seed rounds that modernize banking, payments, wealth management, crypto infrastructure, and enterprise fintech. Propel’s existing portfolio of 62 companies includes Coinbase, Docusign, Groww, Neon, and eight other businesses now exceeding $100 million in annual revenue, and the new fund has already deployed capital into five startups focused on AI-native FP&A, payments processing, and energy infrastructure.

VC CT: What the VCs are saying on Crypto Twitter

Maria Shen (Electric Capital)

• Authored a report arguing that Ethereum is best positioned to serve the global stablecoin economy, with ETH emerging as its reserve asset.

Alex (Scimitar Capital)

• Explored how traders use “thin slicing” to infer market trends from limited signals, emphasizing the importance of quick, intuitive judgments over exhaustive analysis.

Mason Nystrom (Pantera Capital)

• Highlighted the rapid revenue scaling of crypto applications that monetize attention and volatility, projecting that AI-enhanced trading interfaces will define the next wave of DeFi growth.

Quick Recap

• Total Deals: 15
• Total Raised: $109M
• Acquisitions: 7
• Newly Launched Funds: Ego Death Capital ($100M) and Propel Venture Partners Fund V ($100M)

That’s a wrap for this week’s Crypto Venture Weekly. Thanks for tuning in, and see you next week!

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