And then take a “look at whose names are on the checks, and the story sharpens,” Heaver suggested. BlackRock, Apollo, HSBC, BNP Paribas, Citadel, Goldman Sachs, and Nasdaq all invested in regulated crypto companies, she noted. Mastercard paid $1.8 billion to acquire the stablecoin payments company BVNK outright. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, ADIA, backed a $355 million institutional blockchain round in Canton Network alongside a16z, Apollo, and HSBC, she said.
Rob Hadick, general partner at Dragonfly, itself an investor in Rain, which raised $250 million in the period, put it in terms of direction rather than regulation.
“If you look at where the money is flowing in crypto, it is going towards the future of finance and markets,” Hadick said in a Telegram conversation. He explained that Polymarket is building real price discovery on world events, and Rain is driving mainstream adoption of dollar-based stablecoins. “The industry has matured, and the funding environment reflects that.”
The value of compliance
Vineet Budki, managing partner at Sigma Capital, went into the mechanics in more detail. “Licensing has moved from a footnote to a line item in how we value a business,” he said via Telegram as well.
“Code can be forked over a weekend; a VARA license or a MiCA passport takes anywhere between 18 to 24 months and millions of dollars before a project goes to market and processes a single transaction. We’re not paying for the product anymore: we’re paying for the years the next competitor loses trying to catch up.”
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