Crypto Venture Weekly: November 3-7, 2025

Introduction

16 projects raised $630 million this week, led by Ripple’s $500 million strategic round at a $40 billion valuation, while BitMine, Evernorth, Strategy, Future Holdings, and Strive collectively announced $564 million in digital asset treasury allocations. Ripple acquired Palisade and Zama acquired KKRT Labs, expanding institutional custody and zero-knowledge scalability capabilities. Karthik Senthil outlined the rise of the “crowdsourced training stack” for AI, Jasper De Maere analyzed crypto’s transition into a self-funded phase amid slowing inflows, and 1confirmation reflected on founder resilience during down cycles. Here’s the breakdown of this week’s top deals and insights.

Key Highlights

• Notable Deals: Ripple ($500M), fomo ($17M), Donut Labs ($15M), Liquid ($7.6M), Arx Research ($6.1M), Harmonic ($6M), Sprinter ($5.2M), and Zynk ($5M).
• Digital Asset Treasuries: BitMine ($113M for ETH), Evernorth ($214M for XRP), Strategy ($45.6M for BTC), Future Holdings ($31M for BTC), Strive ($160M for BTC).
• M&A Activity: Ripple acquired Palisade, and Zama acquired KKRT Labs.
• VC CT: Karthik Senthil introduced the “crowdsourced training stack” as a decentralized model for scaling specialized AI; Jasper De Maere analyzed crypto’s shift into a self-funded phase amid slowing inflows; and 1confirmation reflected on founder resilience during market cycles where enduring companies are built.

Notable Deals

16 projects collectively raised $630 million this week. Here are the eight that stood out:

Ripple

• The Pitch: Enterprise cross-border payments blockchain
• Round: $500 million Strategic at a $40 billion valuation
• Investors: Led by Citadel and Fortress Investment Group, with participation from Pantera Capital, Brevan Howard, Marshall Wace, and more

fomo

• The Pitch: Consumer crypto trading app
• Round: $17 million Series A
• Investors: Led by Benchmark with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Archetype, Will Price, Luca Netz, and more

Donut Labs

• The Pitch: Agentic crypto browser
• Round: $15 million Seed
• Investors: Hack VC, Bitkraft Ventures, Inception Capital, Axia8 Ventures, Sky9 Capital, Makers Fund, and more

Liquid

• The Pitch: Perpetuals DEX aggregator
• Round: $7.6 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Paradigm with participation from General Catalyst, Alpen Capital, Ashwin Ramachandran, and more

Arx Research

• The Pitch: Building a handheld point-of-sale device for digital asset payments
• Round: $6.1 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Castle Island Ventures with participation from 1kx, Placeholder, Inflection, and more

Harmonic

• The Pitch: Open block building system optimized for validator revenue and throughput on Solana
• Round: $6 million Seed
• Investors: Paradigm and undisclosed “key Solana stakeholders”

Sprinter

• The Pitch: Crosschain “solving-as-a-service” infrastructure provider
• Round: $5.2 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Robot Ventures with participation from WAGMI Ventures, Uniswap, A.Capital Ventures, Atka, and more

Zynk

• The Pitch: Settlement infrastructure for instant global payments
• Round: $5 million Seed
• Investors: Led by Hivemind Capital Partners with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Alliance DAO, Polymorphic Capital, and more

Digital Asset Treasuries

Bitmine

• The Pitch: BitMine Immersion Technologies (Nasdaq: BMNR) added 27,316 ETH (~$113 million) to its corporate treasury this week, boosting total holdings to over 3.3 million ETH (~$13.2 billion).
• Round: $113 million Ethereum purchase
• Investors: ARK Invest, Bill Miller III, Digital Currency Group, Founders Fund, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, and Pantera Capital

Evernorth

• The Pitch: Evernorth, a DAT focused on holding XRP for institutional and corporate investors, announced an additional $214 million XRP purchase.
• Round: $214 million XRP purchase
• Investors: Ripple, SBI Holdings, and others

Strategy

• The Pitch: Bitcoin treasury company Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), formerly MicroStrategy, acquired 397 BTC (~$45.6 million) at an average price of $114,771 per bitcoin, bringing total holdings to 641,205 BTC (~$69 billion).
• Round: $45.6 million Bitcoin purchase funded via ongoing equity and preferred stock issuances
• Investors: Public market investors

Future Holdings

• The Pitch: Switzerland’s FUTURE Holdings AG, a self-styled premier Bitcoin treasury company, raised around $31 million in a strategic funding round to expand its institutional Bitcoin operations, strengthen its balance sheet, and build infrastructure for large-scale treasury and advisory services.
• Round: $31 million Strategic Funding Round
• Investors: Fulgur Ventures, Nakamoto, TOBAM, and others

Strive

• The Pitch: Strive (Nasdaq: ASST) raised $160 million through an upsized public offering of its Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock (SATA). Proceeds will be used to accumulate Bitcoin, reinforcing the company’s position as a publicly traded vehicle for digital asset treasury exposure.
• Round: $160 million Public Offering
• Investors: Undisclosed

M&A Activity

Ripple acquired Palisade

Ripple acquired Palisade, a digital asset wallet and custody provider, to expand its institutional custody capabilities and strengthen its position as a full-stack crypto infrastructure provider. Palisade’s wallet-as-a-service platform offers secure, scalable Multiparty Computation (MPC) and a zero-trust architecture, enabling rapid wallet provisioning, multichain asset management, and DeFi integration. The acquisition enhances Ripple Custody’s ability to serve banks, fintechs, and corporates with end-to-end solutions spanning long-term storage, treasury management, and high-speed payments, while deepening its integrations across Ripple Payments and Ripple Prime.

Zama acquired KKRT Labs

Zama acquired KKRT Labs, a zero-knowledge R&D firm known for building high-performance proving engines and modular rollup systems for Ethereum-compatible blockchains. The acquisition strengthens Zama’s expertise in zero-knowledge scalability and accelerates its roadmap to deliver confidential transactions at scale across public chains such as Ethereum and Solana. By integrating KKRT’s team and technology into Zama Protocol, the company aims to achieve over 10,000 confidential transactions per second, enabling privacy-preserving applications in payments, DeFi, and asset management.

VC CT: What VCs are saying on Crypto Twitter

Karthik Senthil (Lattice)

• Outlined the concept of the “crowdsourced training stack,” proposing that distributed contributor networks using crypto-based coordination will replace capital-intensive AI labs as the dominant model for fine-tuning specialized AI systems.

Jasper De Maere (Wintermute)

• Analyzed the slowdown in inflows across stablecoins, ETFs, and digital asset treasuries, arguing that crypto has entered a self-funded phase where capital recirculates internally despite strong global liquidity and ongoing central bank easing.

1confirmation

• Reflected on founder burnout during crypto’s current downturn, arguing that despite fading narratives and shrinking attention, this “build when the market doesn’t care” phase is when enduring companies emerge.

Quick Recap

• Total Deals: 16
• Total Raised: $630M
• Digital Asset Treasuries: $564M
• Acquisitions: 3
• 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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