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From the outside, it looks like crypto got everything it wanted, but not for all market participants. Similar to other markets, you don’t need to own everything, but own the few right things for long enough, in a size that counts.

Gm!

Welcome to the November Deal Flow Digest, including every crypto / web3 funding round we tracked last month, as well as the ALL the deals, and the recent hackathon/demo day results (in the links).

Picking Winners, Power Laws in Crypto and Public Markets

Market Sentiment varies based on where you look. In fact, a weird thing is happening this cycle.

From the outside, it looks like crypto finally got everything it wanted… We have favorable legislation. Spot ETFs are hoovering up BTC. Stablecoins are going mainstream. Corporates and even sovereigns are adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. Big tech is experimenting with or integrating stablecoins.

If you only skim headlines, it feels like “number go up” technology is working for the entire “crypto” asset class.

But if you actually live in this industry, and spend time with “crypto-native” people the sentiment often feels… pretty bad.

Why? Perhaps because most crypto-native portfolios are heavily tilted toward non-BTC assets. And outside BTC (and a handful of large caps), most of the market is still far off the highs, or even below post-FTX levels.

For example: Taking a basket of the top 50 altcoins - not obscure microcaps, but the big recognizable names and comparing that basket to where it was right after the FTX collapse in late 2022…. The result: broadly, below its post-FTX levels:

So the regulatory/institutional backdrop is the best it’s ever been, but if you didn’t rotate into the right few names, you don’t feel like you’re in a bull market at all. The majority of “crypto” has performed.. Not great.

So being invested in “crypto” is not enough. This is a game dominated by a tiny handful of winners.

Is this concentration of winners actually unusual? Not really.

If you zoom out on U.S. equities since the 1920s, the distribution of returns is brutally skewed.

Some banger facts. ALL the net wealth in the US stock market since 1926 has been generated by just 3.4% of companies. In other words, ~97% of all stocks have barely contributed to long-term shareholder wealth creation.

Just 0.26% of publicly traded stocks have created HALF of all wealth.

That’s a power law.

If you owned that small concentration of companies, the stock market looks like the greatest wealth-creation engine in history. If you owned the rest, your experience was… not great.

The empirical evidence is clear: public equity returns are not normally distributed; they follow an extreme “few big winners” distribution.

And that has consequences for how indices evolve over time.The benchmark most investors think of as a “broad” or “diversified” exposure to equities is, in practice, anything but.

The top of the S&P 500 has become increasingly concentrated. The largest ten stocks now make up ~40% of the index, compared with a long-term average closer to ~27%. Just 3 stocks (Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple) represent roughly a fifth of the entire index.

The current crop of Mag7 stocks comprise ~38% of index weight. And if you zoom out further, the ten largest U.S. companies together are worth > $1T more than the entire stock market of Europe.

So when you buy a plain-vanilla S&P 500 ETF, about forty cents of every dollar is effectively a bet on ten companies. Twenty cents is a concentrated wager on three large AI/Big Tech names. The other 490 stocks are there, but they’re not what’s really driving your returns. What looks like broad diversification on the surface is, in practice, a highly concentrated tech-and-AI trade sitting on top of a long tail that barely moves the needle.

The lesson is the same: a small minority of assets account for the bulk of the returns. Concentration in winners leads directly to concentration in the indices and in wealth outcomes.

Now back to crypto. Given how public markets behave, we shouldn’t be surprised that Bitcoin and a small handful of majors soak up most of the value, while a large portion of the long tail goes to zero or massively underperforms.

If anything, crypto amplifies the power-law dynamic.

Issuance and listing frictions are lower, so we get far more experiments. Feedback loops are faster, narratives rotate more violently, and tokens often financialize before real product–market fit exists. A lot of things trade as if they’ll be future winners long before they’ve actually earned that status…the reality is that most will never.

From a distance, crypto looks like public equities with the gain knob turned up: higher volatility, faster cycles, more experiments, and more brutal selection.

“I have crypto exposure” is not a useful statement. Power laws on power laws. Being allocated to “crypto” isn’t enough, concentration into the right crypto assets is essential - much like the public markets. The composition of your exposure is far more important than the label.

The uncomfortable truth is that most crypto assets will underperform. A small slice will capture almost all the long-term value. And whether this market feels “euphoric,” “sideways,” or “dead” to you personally will largely depend on whether you own that slice in size.

Being “allocated to crypto” is table stakes. In a power-law market, the real game is picking winners and having the conviction to let them dominate your results.

You don’t need to own everything. You just need to own the few things that matter, for long enough, in a size that counts.

Top 10 Crypto Funding Rounds

Kalshi | Undisclosed | DeFi | $1.00B | 2025-11-20
Kalshi, a federally regulated event-based prediction market, raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation in a round led by returning backers Sequoia Capital and CapitalG, with participation from a16z, Paradigm, Anthos and Neo.

Tharimmune | Post-IPO | CeFi | $540M | 2025-11-04
Tharimmune raised $540 million in a post-IPO private placement led by DRW and Liberty City Ventures to kickstart a canton coin–based treasury strategy. The move makes Tharimmune one of the first public companies to fully align its balance sheet and validator operations with the Canton Network.

Ripple | Undisclosed | Infrastructure | $500M | 2025-11-05
Ripple, the crypto payments company, raised $500 million at a $40 billion valuation in a round anchored by Fortress Investment Group, Citadel Securities, Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard and Marshall Wace. The funding will help Ripple expand its cross-border settlement network and deepen partnerships with institutional clients.

Lava | Undisclosed | CeFi | $200M | 2025-11-04
Lava, a Bitcoin-focused financial platform, raised $200 million to scale its BTC-backed credit product known as BLOC. The round, led by angel investor Anthony Pompliano, will support global expansion of Lava’s Bitcoin-collateralized lending services for retail and institutional users.

Canaan | Post-IPO | Others | $72M | 2025-11-04
Canaan Inc., a Nasdaq-listed crypto mining hardware firm, secured a $72 million strategic investment from BH Digital, Galaxy Digital and Weiss Asset Management via the purchase of American depositary shares. The deal strengthens Canaan’s capital position as it gears up for the next wave of Bitcoin mining demand.

Lighter | Undisclosed | DeFi | $68M | 2025-11-11
Lighter, an Ethereum-based zk-rollup derivatives exchange, raised $68 million after recording $279.5 billion in 30-day perpetual volume and over $1.15 billion in TVL. The funding will go toward launching new derivatives across multiple chains, deepening liquidity and building monetization tools for institutional traders.

Cypherpunk | Post-IPO | CeFi | $58.9M | 2025-11-12
Cypherpunk Technologies, a newly rebranded public company spun out of Leap Therapeutics, raised $58.9 million from Winklevoss Capital. The capital is earmarked for building a Bitcoin-style treasury focused on accumulating privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) as a long-term strategic asset.

InitVerse | Strategic | Infrastructure | $50M | 2025-11-25
InitVerse, a blockchain infrastructure project, raised $50 million in a strategic round with investors undisclosed. The funding gives InitVerse a sizable war chest to build out its core infrastructure stack and position itself as a key backend provider for Web3 applications.

Obex | Undisclosed | Others | $37M | 2025-11-18
Obex raised $37 million in an undisclosed round backed by Framework Ventures and LayerZero Labs. The capital will help Obex scale its crypto platform and accelerate product development around new on-chain infrastructure.

Future | Strategic | CeFi | $34.76M | 2025-11-05
Future Holdings AG, a Zurich-based Bitcoin treasury company, raised 28 million Swiss francs (about $34.76 million) in a strategic round led by Fulgur Ventures, Nakamoto and TOBAM. Future plans to use the funds to expand its BTC treasury strategy and build regulated infrastructure around long-term Bitcoin balance sheet exposure.

Click to see all of November’s funding rounds here:

November Crypto VC Fund fundraise Announcements

VCs are continuing to announce their new raises.

2025-11-06: CMT Digital Closes $136 Million Fund IV to Drive Blockchain’s Next Growth Cycle. CMT Digital raised a $136 million fourth crypto venture fund to back blockchain infrastructure and DeFi startups, one of the larger dedicated onchain VC vehicles in a slower funding market.
2025-11-27: DWF Labs Unveils $75 Million DeFi Fund Targeting Perp DEXs and On-Chain Yield Markets. DWF Labs launched a $75 million DeFi-focused investment fund aimed at perp DEXs, decentralized credit markets, and yield protocols, combining capital with liquidity, GTM, and exchange access for portfolio teams.
2025-11-28: Revolutionary $300M Fund: Entrée Capital’s Bold Bet on AI and Crypto Projects. Entrée Capital announced a $300 million fund dedicated to early-stage AI and crypto startups across Israel, the UK, Europe, and the US, signaling strong institutional conviction in the AI–blockchain crossover.

As a reminder, if you are interested in learning more about Bankless Ventures Fund II, please fill out this form and we will be in touch!

Hackathons

Upcoming

BNB Chain x YZi Labs Hack Series: Abu Dhabi | December 5–6
Abu Dhabi, UAE (in-person). $160k in prizes.

ZetaChain × Alibaba Cloud Universal AI Hackathon | December 8–21
Online / APAC-focused. Up to $200k in ecosystem grants for AI × Web3 “Universal Apps.”

Ongoing

Mantle Global Hackathon 2025 | October 15 – December 31 (submissions open until January 15, 2026)
Online. $150k in prizes for Real World Assets, DeFi, AI, ZK, infra, and GameFi/Social tracks.

Finished (results in links)

Hedera Africa Hackathon (results tbd) | July - November
Virtual. $1M in prizes

ETHGlobal Buenos Aires | November 21–23
Buenos Aires / virtual. $500k in prizes across multiple Web3 tracks, with winning projects showcased on the ETHGlobal event page.

Demo Days

Upcoming

Solana Demo Day 2025 – Startup Application | December 5, 2025
Dubai, UAE.

Aquarium XRPL Residency Demo Day #7 DeFi II | December 10, 2025
Paris, France.

Finished

Tenity Singapore XRPL Accelerator Demo Day | Batch VII | November 27, 2025.

Accelerator Applications

Outlier Ventures – Post Web Base Camp | Open
Remote / Global.

XDC Network – XDC Accelerator Program (“Let’s Pivot to XDC”) | Open (applications began Dec 1, 2025)
Remote / UAE-focused (RAKDAO + global Web3 teams).

That’s a wrap for November!

Thank you and good luck out there!

Ben Lakoff, CFA
https://twitter.com/benlakoff

Nov’25: Picking Winners, Power Laws in Crypto and Public Markets