Crypto venture firm Dragonfly Capital has completed a fourth fund of $650 million, marking one of the biggest raises in the sector at a time when many blockchain-focused VCs are struggling, managing partner Haseeb Qureshi said.
“It’s a strange time to celebrate,” Qureshi wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, describing the discouragement and “sadness of a bear market” for cryptocurrencies. However, he noted that Dragonfly has historically raised capital during downturns, including the 2018 ICO crash, and just before Terra’s 2022 crash, the “vintages,” he said, ultimately became the company’s best performers.
In September, the company said it aimed to raise $500 million for its fourth fund, which would focus on early-stage projects. He has not yet identified any of them. In May 2023, Dragonfly Capital raised $650 million for its third crypto fund for later-stage companies.
‘Biggest bet yet’
The new vehicle comes as token prices have plummeted this year and fundraising in crypto companies has slowed sharply. Bitcoin has lost approximately 46% of its value since its all-time high of more than $126,000 in October last year, and the cryptocurrency bearish trend has wiped out more than $1.4 trillion in market capitalization.
While market sentiment remains bearish, Qureshi is bullish on the financial use cases of cryptocurrencies, saying the sector is “exploding” while other non-financial use cases are failing. Indeed, Dragonfly has increasingly leaned into crypto-financial infrastructure, from stablecoins to tokenization and on-chain payments, reflecting a broader shift from speculative Web3 applications toward blockchain-based financial services.
“Stablecoins are eating the world. DeFi has grown so much that it is rivaling CeFi. Financial institutions around the world are racing to develop their crypto strategies. And prediction markets are becoming the most trusted source of truth on the Internet,” he wrote.
Qureshi also highlighted the growth of Dragonfly’s recent investments, including Polymarket, Ethena, Rain and Mesh, as examples of his thesis that financial use cases for cryptocurrencies are having a moment.
His comments come after venture capital firms at Consensus Hong Kong 2026 adopted a cautious tone on the state of the cryptocurrency market amid prevailing bearish sentiment. Crypto-VCs including Qureshi, Mo Shaikh of Maximum Frequency Ventures, and Paul Veradittakit of Pantera Capital echoed the same sentiment: investing in what works, like stablecoins and tokenizations, while selectively betting on sectors like AI and prediction markets.
Qureshi appears to be doubling down on the idea that the cryptocurrency industry is not dead, despite the pessimism, but simply realigning, noting that the new fund is his firm’s “biggest bet yet that the cryptocurrency revolution is still in the early stages of its exponential growth.”
Fortune was the first to report on Dragonfly’s recent rise.
