Is the code no longer worth it? The $11.2 billion financing gave the same answer
Author: Shenzhao TechFlow
Original title: Revealing the flow of $112 billion in half a year: The crypto industry's most valuable asset is changing from code to license
Dubai crypto lawyer Irina Heaver and her team, NeosLegal, did a simple but powerful thing: they sorted out all publicly disclosed crypto industry financings in the first half of 2026, totaling 377 transactions, totaling around $112 billion.
The conclusion is just one sentence:Every loan with a disclosed amount goes to a business that requires regulatory permission to operate.
The top three tracks are: $3.7 billion in payments and stablecoins, $2 billion in forecasting markets, and $1.7 billion in exchanges and trading platforms. All three areas have one characteristic in common, requiring a license to operate lawfully in any major jurisdiction.
Institutional capital's valuation logic for the crypto industry has changed from “what code can you do” to “do you have a license or not”.
Who is checking
Let's first see who is paying for it.
Kalshi closed a $1 billion financing round in May, with investors including Sequoia, Morgan Stanley, Ark Invest, and a16z. Polymarket received $600 million, and the lead investor was the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. It only predicted a single market track and completed 34 rounds of financing within half a year.
Among the $3.7 billion in payments and stablecoin circuits, the names BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and the Persian Gulf Sovereign Fund appear repeatedly.
Vineet Budki, Managing Partner at Sigma Capital, put it bluntly:Regulatory licenses have gone from a compliance footnote to a core valuation indicator.
There is cold arithmetic behind this judgment. An application cycle for a MiCA license or Dubai VARA license usually takes 18 to 24 months and costs millions of dollars. Codes can be forked over the weekend; licenses can't. When venture capital evaluates two projects with similar functions, the one with the license naturally has a moat that cannot be quickly replicated by competitors.
The license plate is the new moat
Let's look at this phenomenon on a longer timeline.
In 2020-2021, the main themes of crypto financing were protocols and infrastructure. Public chains, DeFi protocols, and NFT platforms have taken most of VC money. The investment logic is technical barriers and network effects. Whoever has the highest TVL, who has the most active developer ecosystem, is worth the most.
In 2022 - 2023, the bear market cleaned out a number of pure narrative projects, and financing began to lean towards businesses with real income. Exchanges, wallets, and infrastructure companies have increased their share of financing.
The data for the first half of 2026 shows that this trend has reached its logical end:Capital is no longer paying for technological innovation itself, but for “the ability to operate technological innovation within a compliance framework.” To put it bluntly, a code is a necessary condition; a license is a sufficient condition.
This is highly consistent with the evolutionary path of the traditional financial industry. Fintech companies relied on technology disrupted financing in the early 2010s, and by the late 2010s, they relied on licenses and compliance capabilities. Stripe is worth 100 billion dollars, and the core barrier is its ability to operate in compliance in more than 40 countries, far exceeding the technical gap of the payments API itself.
The crypto industry is following the same path, only faster.
Funding flows and user activity are fragmenting
But there is an important gap in this set of data: it only counts financing, not users.
On-chain data shows that DeFi protocols are growing in TVL, DEX trading volume, and number of active addresses in the first half of 2026. Uniswap, Aave, and Jupiter's unlicensed daily activity and trading volume didn't shrink because VC money stopped flowing to them. Retail users are still trading, borrowing, and providing liquidity on the chain.
This means that what is happening is a more subtle split rather than a “death without a license agreement”:Institutional capital flows to compliant, licensed centralized businesses, and retail user activity is still distributed in an unlicensed on-chain market. Money and people are moving in two directions.
This split is most evident in the prediction market. Kalshi and Polymarket both predict markets, but Kalshi is a CFTC-registered exchange, and Polymarket has no license in the US. Kalshi received $1 billion in funding and Morgan Stanley's endorsement, and Polymarket received $600 million in financing and ICE's endorsement. Both are moving towards compliance, but there are still significant differences in their user base and product experience.
A redefinition of “value”
In an interview, Heaver used an accurate statement: capital is no longer chasing unlicensed, it is chasing regulated businesses.
The deep meaning of this shift is that “what is a valuable asset” in the crypto industry is being redefined. The most valuable asset of 2021 is a widely forked smart contract protocol. The most valuable asset in 2026 could be a MiCA electronic money license covering 27 EU countries, or an entity that has obtained a financial services license from ADGM Abu Dhabi.
Code is still important. However, the code solves the “can you do it” problem, and the license solves the problem of “not being allowed to do it”. When $112 billion of institutional capital voted to tell you that the latter is scarce and more valuable, the center of power in this industry has already moved.
For developers, this isn't necessarily bad news. No license agreements require VC money to operate; they have token incentives, communities, and on-chain revenue. But for entrepreneurs, the reality of 2026 financing is already clear:If you want to take money from an institution, get a license first.
Twitter:https://twitter.com/BitpushNewsCN
Compare the TG exchange group:https://t.me/BitPushCommunity
Compare TG subscriptions:https://t.me/bitpush
