Crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly Capital has closed a $650 million fourth round of funding, managing partner Haseeb Qureshi said, one of the largest rounds in the industry at a time when many blockchain-focused venture capital firms are struggling.
“This is a strange moment of celebration,” Qureshi wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, describing the somber mood and “bear market gloom” in the cryptocurrency industry. However, he noted that Dragonfly has a history of raising funds during downturns, including before the 2018 ICO crash and the 2022 Terra crash, saying that “retro” ended up being the company’s best performer.
In September, the company said it planned to raise $500 million for its fourth fund, which will target early-stage projects. None of them have been identified yet. In May 2023, Dragonfly Capital raised $650 million for its third cryptocurrency fund targeting late-stage companies.
‘The biggest bet yet’
The launch of the new vehicle comes as token prices have plummeted this year and funding for cryptocurrency businesses has slowed significantly. Since reaching an all-time high of more than $126,000 last October, Bitcoin’s value has fallen by about 46%, and the cryptocurrency’s downward trend has wiped out more than $1.4 trillion in market capitalization.
While market sentiment remains bearish, Qureshi is bullish on financial use cases for cryptocurrencies, saying the industry is “exploding” while other non-financial use cases are failing. In fact, Dragonfly is increasingly leaning into crypto-financial infrastructure, from stablecoins to tokenization and on-chain payments, reflecting a broader shift from speculative Web3 applications to blockchain-based financial services.
He wrote: “Stablecoins are eating the world. DeFi has grown so big that it rivals CeFi. Financial institutions around the world are racing to develop their own cryptocurrency strategies. Prediction markets are becoming the most trusted source of truth on the internet.”
Qureshi also pointed to the growth of Dragonfly’s recent investments, including Polymarket, Ethena, Rain, and Mesh, as examples of his argument that financial use cases for cryptocurrencies are booming.
His comments come after venture capital firms expressed caution about the state of the cryptocurrency market at Consensus Hong Kong 2026 as bearish sentiment prevails. Cryptocurrency VCs including Qureshi, MaximumFrequency Ventures’ Mo Shaikh and Pantera Capital’s Paul Veradittakit all expressed the same sentiment: invest in areas that work, such as stablecoins and tokenization, while selectively betting on areas such as artificial intelligence and prediction markets.
Qureshi seemed to reinforce the view that despite the bleak outlook, the crypto industry is not dead but just recalibrating, noting that the new fund is his firm’s “biggest bet yet that the crypto revolution is still in its exponential early stages.”
Fortune magazine first reported Dragonfly’s recent raise.
