Centralized Finance Dominates Crypto Fundraising with $860 Million in April

Crypto fundraising continues to gain momentum, with the primary market seeing a significant influx of capital in April. According to data from RootData, the disclosed total raised in the crypto primary market reached roughly $860 million across 55 financing events and 5 M&A deals.

The sector allocations for this amount are heavily skewed towards centralized platforms, with CeFi topping the table at about $606 million raised across 8 deals. Infrastructure came in second at $105 million across 14 deals, while DeFi secured $90 million across 19 deals, making infrastructure the most active category by deal count.

The top three rounds of the month were all in the trading and L1 stack, with Vietnamese exchange CAEX raising $380 million from OKX Ventures and HashKey Capital, global exchange Kraken securing a $200 million strategic investment from Deutsche Bank, and Layer-1 project Pharos Network closing a $44 million Series A.

The concentration of capital among top exchanges is a notable trend in the industry, with CAEX and Kraken accounting for roughly 67% of all disclosed April capital. This highlights the ongoing dominance of a small number of CeFi leaders in the market.