Digital Assets Report 2025

UK digital assets investment matures after years of rapid expansion

Equity investment in UK digital assets companies has grown substantially over the past decade to
£2.7bn, though recent data suggest the market
is entering a more measured phase after a period of exuberant growth.
 
From modest beginnings — just £7.9mn raised across 11 deals in 2015 — the sector expanded rapidly. In 2021, companies in the sector raised a total of £625m via 103 deals, marking an almost fivefold increase in funding from 2020. A major contributor was Blockchain.com, the London-based cryptocurrency wallet and data platform. It closed two landmark rounds that year: £86.5m in February and £218m in March, together accounting for 49% of all capital raised in the sector in 2021.

Annual investment peaked at £713m in 2022, spread across a record 106 deals, before moderating to £475m in 2024.

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The fintech equity market has followed a similar pattern over the last 10 years, with a sharp rise in 2021 and 2022 followed by a reduction in 2023. The scale of capital raised underlines fintech’s greater maturity relative to digital assets.

In 2024, the wider equity market saw a 9.4% year-on-year decrease. Companies in the digital assets sector were resilient to this, with a 26% increase in funding. However, the first half of 2025 has seen a slow start with deal value reaching £100m – the lowest H1 figures since 2020.

Equity investment and Bitcoin price

From 2019 through 2020, equity funding remained modest, with quarterly raises rarely exceeding £40m. Bitcoin traded below $15k during most of this period, reflecting a cautious investment environment with limited institutional interest. Momentum shifted sharply in 2021 as investment activity surged in Q1 (£368m), tracking closely with Bitcoin’s breakout above $30k. The Bitcoin crash from the highs of Q4 2021 to the lows of Q4 2022 coincided with a reduction in digital assets investment, albeit with a slight lag. During Bitcoin’s recovery from Q4 2022 to Q1 2024, digital assets companies experienced higher investment values.

This correlation does not continue into 2025. Despite Bitcoin reaching record highs, investment into UK digital asset companies has not followed the same trajectory. The Bitcoin price boom has been attributed to the favourable regulation being brought in the US (the GENIUS Act). The slow start in H1 2025 raises the question of whether investors are holding back ahead of new UK rules on digital asset firms.

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Why the UK’s decoupling from the

Bitcoin price matters

Decoupling of Bitcoin’s price from UK deal flow is a double-edged signal. On the positive side, it

suggests capital is starting to chase fundamentals rather than momentum: investors are prioritising regulated revenue, enterprise contracts and defensible IP over trading exposure. The bar for raising equity funding is higher thus capital is flowing to sustainable business models rather than short term trends. This is a positive trend on backing companies with solid business models and thus potential to endure and win over the long-term.

The flip side is a funding gap. If price rallies no longer pull in generalist US capital, UK startups become more reliant on a domestic and European stack of seed-to-growth investors. While European investors have become increasingly more active across the UK ecosystem in recent years, their numbers do not make up for the

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US investor pull out. Without it, founders face longer fundraises, flatter valuations and stronger covenants. Some may choose to relocate to jurisdictions where capital is deeper.

There is a contrarian view that we at AlbionVC share that today’s generation of digital assets companies are operating with a global mindset, global customers and investors from day one. Thus decoupling is less of a concern for outlier founders who are able to raise investor interest in lower liquidity environment. of markets.

A recent example in our portfolio is OpenTrade, offering an institutional grade platform for yield products, who with their globally distributed team service customers across Latin America, Asia and Europe, have raised funding in H1 2025 from leading European and US investors including us at AlbionVC, a16z and Notion Capital. The latest round took place less than 6 months after their previous raise.

For UK policymakers, decoupling should raise alarm bells. Quality capital needs long-term clarity and a functioning sandbox, the pressure to get the rules right and quickly is on.

Breakdown of deals by size

In the early years (2015–2016), the market was dominated by smaller rounds. No deals above £5m were recorded in 2015, and rounds between £500k and £2m consistently accounted for at least a quarter of activity, with the exception of 2016 (19%).

By 2017, larger transactions began to emerge, including Blockchain.com’s £31.5m raise in June—the first UK digital asset deal above £30m. From 2021 onwards, rounds over £10m became a regular feature. This trend coincided with a sharp increase in participation from US and other international investors (see page 14).

Between 2021 and 2024, three companies collectively raised more than £100m each in equity: Blockchain.com, Copper, and Exohood Labs. These landmark raises highlight the transition of the sector to deals of a scale comparable with more established parts of the fintech ecosystem.

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Breakdown of deals by sector and stage

In the early years (2015–2020), the number of deals within the digital assets sector was highly concentrated, with the capital markets and payments sectors together accounting for the majority of deals. This may be due to the sector’s initial focus on building the transactional infrastructure needed to enable trading and the movement of value.

At the time, deal-making also skewed heavily toward the earliest stages: in 2015, more than 80% of deals were seed-stage, and even by 2018–2019, over 70% of activity was still concentrated at seed. The high proportion of early-stage deals reflects both the early stages of the sector and the phase of experimentation observed in this period.

From 2018, the landscape diversified. Software, infrastructure, and insurance emerged more prominently. This period also marked a clear shift toward companies within the Governance, Risk & Compliance segment, reflecting both the institutionalisation of digital assets and the regulation needed for their wider adoption.

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As of 2024, the balance has shifted away from seed and toward later rounds. Seed now accounts for 58.0% of deals (down from 81.8% a decade earlier), while venture makes up 37.0% of the total number of deals secured by these firms.

Data for the first half of 2025 shows that 12.0% of deals by companies in the digital assets sector have been secured by growth-stage companies.

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Investors

Seedcamp is the most active investor by deal count, reflecting its focus on early stage rounds across diverse sectors.

Larger US funds such as Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed are concentrated in infrastructure, banking and capital markets deals.

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Investor geography

US and other international investors have become increasingly active in the UK digital assets market, a shift that has coincided with larger deal sizes.
Between 2017 and 2020, UK-based funds dominated activity, but from 2021 onwards participation from US and global investors rose sharply. This surge aligned with the record levels of capital raised in 2021 and 2022. Although overall investment has eased in recent years, US investors continue to participate at higher levels than those from any other country.
This reliance on US capital highlights both an opportunity and the need to deepen participation from UK and European investors, ensuring the sector’s growth and investment resilience is anchored on a broader base.

Investor type

Specialist capital driving sector growth

Generalist and crypto focused funds dominate digital asset dealmaking, together accounting for 45% of all investors active in the UK market (see methodology for investor type definitions).

The composition of these groups highlights the central role of US capital. Nearly half (46%) of all crypto-focused VC investors are US-based. The next highest proportion of this type is in the UK, at 8%. This highlights that the specialist capital driving much of the sector’s growth is concentrated in the US. By contrast, generalist VC funds are more evenly split, with 31% based in the UK and 29% in the US.As the UK market expands, a deeper pool of specialist domestic firms could help reduce reliance on US capital and capture more of the value created in the sector. The past decade shows how quickly the market can evolve when international capital enters at scale. The next phase will hinge on whether the UK can broaden its investor mix.

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Angel investment

Individual angel investors are active across a range of sub-segments, with Charles Songhurst leading by deal count and showing the broadest spread. Others, such as Paul Smith and Charles Delingpole, are more concentrated in infrastructure and banking, while several investors focus tightly on capital markets.

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Exits by year

Over the past decade, there have been twenty-five UK digital asset exits, with only one IPO to date. Given how early the market remains relative to fintech, this limited exit activity is unsurprising—the talent and capital flywheel is still forming as UK growth-stage digital asset firms scale into global category leaders.

By contrast in the US ecosystem, which is further along the maturity curve, there have been a number of recent large acquisitions, such as Stripe acquiring Bridge for $1.1bn, Kraken acquiring Ninja Platform for $1.5bn, Ripple acquiring Hidden Road for $1.25bn.

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Exits breakdown

To date, most of UK M&A has been driven by US acquirers, underscoring the strength of UK innovation but also highlighting a risk of value leakage as talent and intellectual property are pulled abroad.

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