Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author｜Azuma (@azuma_eth)

The cryptocurrency bear market is still ongoing, but some significant actions with strong signaling have appeared in the primary market.

On May 4th, the venture capital firm Haun Ventures, founded by former U.S. federal prosecutor Katie Haun, announced the completion of a fundraising round totaling $1 billion, with $500 million allocated to early-stage and late-stage funds, primarily targeting cryptocurrency and blockchain startups over the next 2 to 3 years, while further expanding into cross-sectors such as AI agents, fintech, and alternative assets.

Just one day later, a16z announced that its fifth cryptocurrency fund, Crypto Fund 5, has completed fundraising, securing $2.2 billion in committed capital. This fund will continue to focus on the cryptocurrency market, emphasizing those parts that are most easily overlooked during market cycles but have the potential to create long-term value, transforming next-generation infrastructure into products that people use daily.

If we pull the timeline further back, you'll find that this is not a coincidence, but more like the "collective consensus" of leading VCs.

In February this year, Dragonfly's Fund IV completed a $650 million fundraising; at the end of February, multiple media outlets reported that Paradigm was seeking to raise up to $1.5 billion for its next fund; in March, ParaFi announced it had completed a $125 million fundraising; and in late April, sources revealed that Blockchain Capital was raising $700 million for its two funds... In less than three months, these six VCs have quietly accumulated over $6 billion in dry powder.

More critically, this batch of funds was raised not during the hottest market times, but rather during a bear market phase characterized by the depletion of altcoin liquidity, declining primary market valuations, and persistently low industry sentiment. As a16z partner Chris Dixon said, "We are in a relatively quiet phase," this is not a follow-up in the context of a bullish market, but a typical counter-cyclical layout.

Primary Market Shows Divergence

If one only focuses on the $6 billion fundraising amount, it is easy to fall into the illusion that "the primary market is warming up," but the reality is far from that simple. Looking at the current survival status of top VCs versus small and medium-sized VCs, the primary market has shown a clear trend of divergence.

For most small and medium-sized VCs, this cycle is much tougher than imagined. Due to the continued sluggishness of altcoins (virtually missing the entire round of the bull market), coupled with tightening liquidity in the secondary market, the exit channels for funds are severely obstructed, and the positive returns on paper often shrink or even turn negative with long unlocking periods. The underperformance in investment returns directly leads to a decline in LP confidence, making fundraising for new funds increasingly difficult.

Thus we see that most small and medium-sized VCs have to move towards passive contraction in the bear market: some VCs have chosen to reduce fund sizes and lower transaction frequency; some have turned into pure secondary funds; and others have simply exited the market entirely. Many small and medium-sized VCs that had high exposure in the last bull market have now vanished from the market.

In stark contrast is the cohort of top VCs that are still aggressively fundraising. While the investment pace of these VCs has also slowed somewhat as the market turns bearish, their structural advantages are actually strengthening their dominant role in the primary market.

As for the so-called structural advantages, first, leading VCs often have stronger resource monopolization capabilities, allowing them to capture the few high-quality projects more effectively (typical examples include a16z and Paradigm as investors in Kalshi, Dragonfly and ParaFi as investors in Polymarket, and Blockchain Capital investing in Coinbase and Circle); second, leading VCs can cover a more complete investment cycle, from early pre-seed, seed to later A round and B round funding, resulting in more opportunities for follow-on investments or enhanced returns; third, leading VCs have a larger margin for error, as larger asset management scales mean they can tolerate a relatively higher failure rate and can bet on longer-term narratives; fourth, the brand effect of leading VCs means stronger bargaining power; even in the same round of funding, leading VCs can often secure more favorable terms than small and medium-sized VCs.

This structural differentiation ultimately leads to market divergence, highlighting the Matthew effect — if it were in a bull market, small and medium VCs could still stage comebacks through a few lottery-type investments, but in a bear market, this trend will only become more pronounced.

What Is This $6 Billion Looking At?

According to disclosures from these six VCs, the newly raised $6 billion will be allocated to the following fields and directions.

• Dragonfly: Optimistic about the trend of crypto-financialization, particularly mentioning stablecoins, prediction markets, agent payments, on-chain privacy, and tokenization of real assets;
• Paradigm: In addition to crypto, also expanding into AI, robotics, and other cutting-edge technology fields;
• ParaFi: Stablecoins, asset tokenization, institutional-grade on-chain financial products;
• Blockchain Capital: Focusing on early and growth-stage cryptocurrency startups;
• Haun Ventures: Optimistic about new generation financial infrastructure, including stablecoins, asset tokenization, prediction markets, while also recognizing the agent economy;
• a16z: Mentions stablecoins, DeFi, prediction markets, asset tokenization, etc., while believing that in an era of AI explosion, the original characteristics of crypto networks can still be used to solve issues of software transparency and verifiability.

When putting together the public statements of the six VCs, it can be seen that while there are certain differences in emphasis, overall, there has been a clear convergence.

The most core consensus, undoubtedly, is the new generation of on-chain financial infrastructure represented by stablecoins, asset tokenization (RWA), prediction markets, and on-chain payments. Whether it is Haun Ventures, a16z, Dragonfly, or ParaFi, these keywords are repeatedly mentioned in the directions of their new funds. To some extent, this also indicates a change in the investment logic of the crypto industry. Compared to the last cycle, which was more emotionally driven, this time, leading VCs are placing greater value on projects that have already shown initial validation of real demand and have the potential to carry traditional financial flows over the long term.

In addition, the leading VCs are also visibly ramping up their AI-related layouts; Paradigm has clearly stated it will allocate part of the funds towards AI and robotics, while Haun Ventures and Dragonfly have also mentioned agent-related directions. The reasons behind this trend are not complicated: on one hand, AI has become the most certain mainline in the current global tech industry, and top VCs cannot afford to miss out; on the other hand, the crypto industry is also trying to prove that it is not just a marginalized old narrative in the AI craze, but can be a part of the underlying infrastructure of the AI era—especially after the gradual rise of the agent economy, the original openness, composability, and permissionless nature of crypto networks have begun to regain their value.

Bear Market Fundraising Is Essentially Betting on the Next Cycle

For VCs, a bear market is often the true stage that determines the future landscape.

While funds are easiest to raise in a bull market, project valuations often come with higher entry thresholds; only during times of low market sentiment, depleted liquidity, and ineffective industry narratives do VCs have the opportunity to truly amplify excess returns through their judgment capabilities.

Looking back at past cycles, bear markets do not kill truly high-quality projects; rather, they accelerate the market's reshuffling speed, allowing "gold to shine more quickly." This is also why, even though the current market sentiment remains low, leading VCs are still significantly fundraising counter-cyclically.

Because what they are genuinely betting on is never "the present", but rather who can become the next Circle, the new Hyperliquid, the new Polymarket after the next cycle begins.

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