The first quarter of 2026 split crypto venture capital into two very different markets. Overall funding fell roughly 50% from the previous quarter to about $4 billion across 355 deals, while newly launched venture funds hit the lowest count since Q3 2020. Yet stablecoin payment companies were still closing sizable rounds, from Rain’s $250 million Series C to OpenFX’s $94 million raise. The pattern suggests the pullback is about selectivity, not a shutdown.
Those figures come from Galaxy Research, cited in the original report . Most of the decline was tied to fewer oversized late-stage rounds. Seed and early-stage activity continued, and 57% of capital still went to later-stage companies. That mix points to investors backing businesses with customers, revenue, and transaction volume instead of token-dependent projects.
Stablecoin Rails Are Absorbing Fintech-Style Capital
Stablecoin payments are not the largest VC category. Companies in trading, exchanges, investing, and lending raised about $2.6 billion in the quarter, still well ahead. What changed is that payment infrastructure kept producing rapid successive rounds while other sectors cooled. Rain, RedotPay, OpenFX, Mesh, Conduit, and related startups now cover card issuance, cross-border settlement, foreign exchange liquidity, wallets, and bank connectivity.
The market context matters. A Federal Reserve study put total stablecoin market capitalization at around $317 billion in April 2026, up more than 50% from the start of 2025. Visa and Artemis adjusted data showed roughly $10.2 trillion in stablecoin transaction volume over 12 months. But about 36% of that came from deposits to and withdrawals from centralized exchanges. That distinction is crucial: the headline number is not the same as real-world payment volume, even though investors are treating stablecoin rails as payment infrastructure.
A Move Toward Metrics Venture Funds Can Underwrite
The latest round of stablecoin payment startups often discloses conventional fintech figures. Rain reported about $3 billion in annualized transaction volume across more than 200 partners after a $250 million Series C. OpenFX told Reuters its annualized payment volume rose from $4 billion to more than $45 billion in about a year. RedotPay claimed six million registered users, annualized payment volume above $10 billion, and profitability.
Those numbers are mostly self-reported and not independently audited. Definitions of payment volume differ across companies, so comparisons can be misleading. Still, the shift is meaningful. Investors are evaluating these companies on net revenue, gross margin, customer retention, and transaction costs rather than on wallet addresses and token prices. That makes the category easier to place alongside traditional fintech. The same institutional discipline has been visible in tokenization and real-world asset deals, where institutional settlement moves have become more concrete .
Payment infrastructure also has a clearer revenue path than many crypto protocols. Startups can charge transaction fees, foreign exchange spreads, card issuance fees, API subscriptions, and on-ramp or off-ramp fees. Those are not new business models. Stablecoins simply act as the back-end settlement layer, which means users may never see them. Félix Pago lets users initiate remittances through WhatsApp; Rain and RedotPay connect stablecoins to cards;
