I recently noticed a very interesting phenomenon. In early May, the crypto market saw two long-absent large fundraising events—Haun Ventures completed a $1 billion new fundraise, and a16z crypto launched its fifth crypto fund with $2.2 billion. During a time when regulatory policies are still being developed and market sentiment isn't particularly optimistic, these top-tier institutions are still making large bets. This actually reflects a deep shift in capital logic.

My observation is that now, institutions willing to invest huge sums are no longer just looking at whether a project can quickly explode, but are starting to ask a more fundamental question—who can survive through longer future regulatory cycles?

Looking back at the bull market of 2021, VC focus was on TVL, user growth, and token price expectations. As long as the project narrative was strong and could quickly capture market share, fundraising was not an issue. But the collapse of FTX changed everything. It was not just a liquidity contraction; more importantly, regulators began to intervene more deeply. The SEC, CFTC, and banking systems in the U.S. started scrutinizing stablecoins, trading platforms, DeFi, and other areas.

This means that VC investment logic must transcend old ways of thinking. In the past, capital was willing to buy into "potential future growth," but now the priority is whether projects can exist long-term within future regulatory frameworks. Compliance capabilities, compatibility with traditional finance, and institutionalization—these previously overlooked factors are now central to valuation.

The most obvious change is in the stablecoin sector. This track has now become one of the most active areas of primary market financing. Tether profits from US Treasury interest income, while Circle is building a comprehensive on-chain dollar infrastructure. U.S. regulatory attitudes are also shifting—stablecoins are beginning to be seen as part of the next-generation dollar settlement infrastructure, with Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe expanding related deployments.

Interestingly, Haun Ventures and a16z crypto, despite their different styles, both completed large fundraises at the same time, indicating they see the same trend. Haun’s founder Katie Haun, a former federal prosecutor, brings a regulatory perspective from the start. Her investments in projects like Bridge and BitGo focus on whether they can become infrastructure that integrates into mainstream finance.

a16z’s Fund 5 more directly states—after the market bubble deflates, which products will still be in continuous use? They explicitly list seven investment directions: stablecoins, payments, on-chain finance, asset tokenization, perpetual futures, prediction markets, and AI agents. Compared to the 2021 craze for NFTs and high-yield DeFi, today’s emphasis is on infrastructure that is beginning to form practical use cases.

Chris Dixon highlighted a key point in the announcement—that even in a down market, stablecoin usage continues to grow. People are genuinely using them for cross-border transfers and dollar savings. This exposes the inefficiency of traditional payment networks. A16z partner Guy Wuollet bluntly stated: the entire field has shifted from “coding in hoodies in mom’s basement” to “putting on a tie and talking to big banks about replacing core ledgers with blockchain.”

The core question behind this shift is—who can survive the next decade of regulatory cycles and truly integrate into the global financial system? Currently, primary market capital is highly polarized: late-stage funding is growing significantly while early-stage funding contracts. Capital is accelerating toward top-tier institutions capable of full-cycle investments. The crypto industry is transitioning from a wild-growth adolescence to an adulthood of mainstream integration. At this turning point, identifying institutions with regulatory certainty will define the next decade.