After the FTX collapse, which venture capital firms are still firmly investing? Which ones have fallen silent?

The past year has been very difficult for the cryptocurrency industry. Since the beginning of 2022, the prices of BTC, ETH, and others have been fluctuating downward, followed by the dramatic collapse of Terra/Luna, the bankruptcies of Three Arrows Capital, Voyager, and others, and then the risks continued to spread, with a reach beyond what most people could imagine.

However, all of this pales in comparison to the FTX explosion in November.

"It is important that customers are protected," SBF wrote in his tweet announcing that FTX was about to reach a strategic deal with Binance. But in the blink of an eye, the deal was canceled, and FTX could no longer protect customer interests.

We then saw the wide-ranging impact of the FTX incident on the crypto market, first affecting the Solana ecosystem that it had heavily supported, and then BTC and ETH were also affected. Under the snowball effect, no one could remain unscathed.

This included many leading venture capital firms, such as Temasek and Sequoia Capital, which wrote down their investments in FTX to zero and were forced to publicly apologize. According to reports, Multicoin saw its assets decline by 55% in about two weeks, with 10% of the losses stemming from some of its assets being placed on the FTX platform, and another 45% loss coming from holding too much SOL position.

Additionally, the incident also led the SEC to formulate new regulations aimed at making it easier for investors to sue for VC negligence and poor investments, with the proposal expected to be completed as early as the first quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, Multicoin has recently been reported to have its founders under investigation by regulatory authorities, and they are being sued by LPs.

All of these factors have contributed to an obvious result—many well-known traditional venture capital funds and native crypto funds that previously frequently invested have changed their strategies, significantly reducing their investment frequency, causing the already cooling primary investment and financing market to shrink further.

According to Rootdata, the total financing amounts in the crypto industry for Q2, Q3, and Q4 were $7.204 billion, $4.558 billion, and $3.346 billion, respectively, showing a significant downward trend month by month. By December, the publicly disclosed investment and financing amount in the crypto industry fell below $1 billion for the first time.

So, in this harsh winter, which venture capital firms were most affected? Which venture capital firms remain highly active and steadfast in investing in the future of the industry? Through Rootdata data, we can see that since the FTX explosion (November 7), firms such as Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, LD Capital, Solana Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Huobi Ventures, NGC Ventures, Delphi Digital, and DCG have appeared in public investment and financing records no more than once, while their total investment counts over the past year were all above 30.

However, not all crypto investors have chosen to retract their lines; at this moment, some investment institutions are still firmly making moves. We have compiled a list of the investment institutions that have made the most moves since the FTX explosion, including Shima Capital, Polychain, HashKey Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, and Animoca Brands, all with more than 7 investments.

Among them, the most active institution is Shima Capital, which has made a total of 11 investments since the FTX explosion, leading 5 projects, including Finery Markets, Open Forest Protocol, and Quasar Finance. Previously, in August 2022, Shima Capital announced that it had raised $200 million for its first Web3 venture capital fund, Shima Capital Fund I.

Polychain investment records Source: Rootdata

Next is Coinbase Ventures, which has appeared in the investor lists of 8 financing events since the FTX incident, including Obol Network, Alkimiya, MSafe, Bonfire, Nametag, Perennial, Panoptic, and Fleek.

The investment counts for Polychain, HashKey Capital, Big Brain Holdings, and Animoca Brands are all 7 investments. Additionally, institutions such as Binance Labs, a16z, Blockchain Capital, and Polygon Ventures have all made 6 investments. Notably, HashKey Capital announced on January 17 that it raised $500 million, which is one of the few fundraising activities of crypto venture capital funds in recent months.

However, it should be noted that many projects may delay the release of investment and financing news by 1-2 months, so the above data may have some degree of error and is for reference only.

With the recent rapid correction in the secondary market, the primary investment and financing market has also welcomed a small surge recently. On January 17 alone, Rootdata recorded 11 new public investment and financing and merger announcements. Furthermore, considering that venture capital firms still need to deploy the massive funds they raised during the boom, the primary market may soon enter a more sustained recovery phase.