Coinbase Ventures became the most active crypto VC in the first half of 2026, and the most popular DeFi, AI, and payment circuits

Comparing news, CryptoRank data shows that Coinbase Ventures completed 30 investments in the first half of 2026, making it the most active crypto venture capital; Animoca Brands, a16z, and Tether completed 19, 18, and 15 investments, respectively.

Coinbase Ventures has completed 75 investments over the past 12 months, ranking first in the industry, followed by Animoca Brands, yZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), GSR, and a16z.

Although the crypto market is still in a slump, the scale of industry financing continued to shrink. The total amount of crypto corporate financing fell to US$1.4 billion in June, down 63% from US$3.8 billion in April; the number of funding rounds also dropped from 89 rounds in May to 61 rounds. Meanwhile, the number of independent investment institutions participating in the investment dropped from 452 in October 2025 to 242 in June of this year.

Looking at the circuit, DeFi, payments, and AI were still the most popular fields for capital in the past year, completing 216, 131, and 128 rounds of financing, respectively. Among them, Coinbase Ventures focused on payment agreements, DeFi, infrastructure, and RWA tokenization projects.