M&A in crypto up nearly 5,000% in 2021; average deal size triples: PwC report

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The PwC research also showed that fundraising across crypto companies increased eightfold to reach a record high of $34 billion in 2021. This is a monumental increase of 645 percent as compared to 2020. According to the report, the top five investors, in order of deal count, were AU21, Genesis Block Ventures, Genblock Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Moonwhale.

A major chunk of crypto fundraising shifted back to the United States, with over 51 percent of deals occurring there. This is a substantial increase from the previous year's 41 percent.

Despite this increase, Europe and EMEA surpassed the US in total deal value, even though they only account for 33 percent of the deals globally. The report put this discrepancy down to the fact that several special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deals were led out of the EMEA region. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the remaining 13 percent, garnering $5 billion in fundraising deals.

The big four accounting firm also stated that fundraising activities from crypto and NFT-focused companies like FTX, Sorare, and Celsius helped increase the average fundraising deal size by $16 million.

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These findings were part of PwC's 5th Global Cryptocurrency (Crypto) Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) and Fundraising Report. And according to Henri Arslanian, a crypto leader at PwC, some of the deal valuations had hit levels “that are often difficult to justify.”

However, the numbers aren’t very surprising, especially given how cryptocurrencies and other digital assets have boomed in the last few years. Bitcoin and several other altcoins reached all-time highs in 2021. And according to a report by Chainalysis, the NFT space also saw a major boost, becoming a $44 billion industry in 2021. All put together, the digital asset marketplace has reached a global market cap of nearly $2 trillion.