Written by Elizabeth Howcroft
LONDON (Reuters) – Global venture capital investment in crypto companies rose to $2.4 billion in the first three months of 2024, data showed on Monday, a tentative sign that investor interest is returning. showed that.
According to Pitchbook data, crypto venture capital flows peaked at $11.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022, but volumes have since declined for seven consecutive quarters, reaching just $1.7 billion in the final quarter of 2023. It stayed in the dollar.
“The cryptocurrency industry is still in its infancy, and there is plenty of room for growth and innovation,” PitchBook senior analyst Robert Lee said in a report.
“Barring a major market downturn, we expect the volume and pace of investment to continue to increase throughout the year,” he added.
A combination of low interest rates and high risk appetite led to explosive growth in the crypto industry in 2020 and 2021, but a series of bankruptcies of major crypto companies spooked investors in 2022, causing Bitcoin prices to plummet. did.
Investors who backed US exchange FTX are forced to write down their investments to zero, while millions of people lose their funds as various crypto platforms no longer allow withdrawals. is what happened.
Some investors have grown more confident in cryptocurrencies over the past year, helped in part by U.S. regulators approving an exchange-traded fund (ETF) to track the spot price of Bitcoin in early 2024.
Bitcoin has steadily recovered from its 2022 lows, hitting a new all-time high of $73,803.25 in March, but has struggled to find direction since then.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft; Editing by Tommy Reggioli Wilkes and Susan Fenton)
