According to statistics from Big four accounting company KPMG, the crypto space have continued to grow due to the surge in the number of investors.
The report, titled “Pulse of Fintech H1 2021,” looks at global investment activity in various financial technology verticals for the first half of the year.
Between January and June, 2,456 investment deals totalling $98 billion were completed. According to the report, one of the top fintech trends for 2021 is the accelerated expansion of crypto and blockchain investments.
In the first half of 2021, 548 investment actions in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors were recorded, including venture capital, private equity, and mergers & acquisitions.
The entire amount of investments made in the first half of this year is $8.7 billion, more than double the total value of 580 investment deals totalling $4.3 billion signed in 2020.
BlockFi, Paxos, Blockchain.com, and Bitso were among the companies that raised more than $100 million in funding rounds, leading to an increase in investment volume.
“Cryptocurrency and blockchain are expanding globally,” said Anton Ruddenklau, global fintech co-leader at KPMG.
“There’s so much happening in the space right now, between the eCNY project running in China, Facebook’s Diem, a number of ecosystem initiatives — not to mention all the different trading platforms raising money. Digital currencies and virtual assets are a big, big topic of conversation. I think for the rest of this year at least, crypto will be a very hot ticket for investors.”
Rising investor awareness, according to the survey, is a crucial driver of investment growth. Investors now have a greater understanding of “not only crypto assets but also the operational and procedural side of crypto — from custody and storage to storekeeping, as well as the competitiveness and maturity of service providers,” according to the report.
The cryptocurrency market will continue to mature, according to KPMG, while the gap between cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology will become clearer.
Nonfungible tokens (NFT), which were a hot topic in the first half, will play a role in the evolution of crypto exchanges by allowing for the creation of NFT-specific trading platforms.
For the rest of the year, the report predicts a greater focus on regulatory frameworks. If India regulates cryptocurrencies as an asset class in the second half of 2021, it will have a significant influence on the entire ecosystem.
