Follow the Money: $2 Billion for Strategy, YZi Labs Incubator, and DeFi Dominance

Between August 22 and August 29, 2026, the Incrypted editorial team recorded 31 investment deals. Among them are traditional venture rounds, mergers, and corporate placements. Details are known for 28 of these, with a total capital raised amounting to $2.31 billion. Incrypted Infographic.

Classic Venture Deals

During this period, we recorded seven rounds in this category, namely:

• $74 million --- RDQ Clearing.* The clearing company raised this amount in a round led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities. Other participants include ABN AMRO Clearing Bank and Nyca Partners. RDQ* provides brokers, investment advisors, and financial organizations with infrastructure for clearing, asset custody, and access to the U.S. market, and the raised funds will be directed towards expansion in North America, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as the development of solutions for digital assets and tokenization.

• $68 million --- Fasset. The stablecoin neobank closed a new funding round led by Japan's SBI Group, reaching a valuation of $1 billion. Fasset operates on its own L2 Ethereum infrastructure called OWN Network, built on Arbitrum and utilizing artificial intelligence systems. The network connects banks, telecommunications companies, payment firms, liquidity providers, and other financial institutions.

• $17 million --- Hivemind Digital Group. The RWA category project raised this amount in a strategic round led by M&G Investments. Other participants included CPIC Investment Management (HK), ZA Bank, FalconX, Sonic Boom Ventures, and other investors. Hivemind focuses on transferring traditional financial assets to blockchain, and the raised funds will be used to develop tokenization infrastructure, expand partnerships with institutional companies, and create new investment strategies.

• $14 million --- entropy. The company raised $14 million in a round led by Ribbit Capital. The team did not publicly name other investors. entropy creates perpetual contract markets for cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities, and private company assets prior to IPO based on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid. The funds will be used for new pricing mechanisms and launching markets for assets that were previously difficult to trade around the clock. Additionally, the team reported placing around $40 million in HYPE to operate this infrastructure.

• $4 million --- City Protocol. The infrastructure platform for issuing and managing investment products on the blockchain closed a Pre-A series round. Participants included Dragonfly, Jump Crypto, CMT Digital, Stratified Capital, Adaverse, and Mirana. The platform enables the creation of yield strategies, tokenized assets, and investment vaults, making such tools more accessible to ordinary users.

• $3 million --- ORO. The platform closed a strategic round led by MH Ventures and Mapleblock Capital. Other participants included M2M Capital, Archer Capital, X21 Digital, BlockRise, Zerone Venture, Beenco Labs, Pollin8, and Velion Venture. ORO creates a financial layer based on intentions. Users are expected to be able to give commands in plain text, and the system will automatically convert them into a sequence of operations on the blockchain. The funds will be used to complicate such scenarios, develop the Shield Engine security system, mobile application, and expand the team.

Some projects also announced received funding but did not disclose details.

HertzFlow has announced an angel round involving founders and representatives from Flap, 42Space, Zerobase, Huma Finance, Surf, Bitway, Raydium, Virtuals, Sign, Cetus Protocol, and Mask Network. HertzFlow is creating a decentralized platform on the BNB Chain for trading perpetual contracts with leverage on cryptocurrencies and other assets. The size of the round and specific spending directions have not been disclosed.

Token Sales

This week, we recorded at least two events in this category. Specifically, the HEEBOO project conducted a public token sale through Metaplex on the Solana network, selling 5% of the total supply—50 million tokens—and raising $1.2 million. It serves as a platform for engaging creators of entertainment projects with audiences, where users can support new projects and receive rewards for participation.

Additionally, the Multipli protocol held a token sale for MULT through the Sonar platform by Echo, targeting a volume of $1 million. For regular participants, the project was valued at $250 million, while for ecosystem reward holders, it was valued at $100 million. Multipli is developing a market for tokenized real assets, allowing gold, stocks, and other assets to be used as collateral for liquidity and yield.

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Corporate Placements

This week saw several such deals. Specifically, on August 26, 2026, the exchange for trading event contracts, Kalshi, filed a form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding its listed shares. According to it, from April to August, the platform raised $1.12 billion through private securities sales.

This includes a $1 billion round reported in May. It is unclear whether the additional $120 million was raised through the execution of warrants or by attracting additional investors.

Additionally, Strategy submitted documents to the Commission on August 24 regarding its ATM program. According to it, from August 17 to 23, it raised just over $2 billion by selling 18.26 million MSTR. The organization’s Bitcoin portfolio remained unchanged.

Mergers and Acquisitions

On August 25, 2026, RockawayX announced the acquisition of the Relayer Capital fund; based on it, the RockawayX Liquid Opportunities Fund will be launched for investments in liquid tokens and shares of crypto companies. According to Forbes, the new fund plans to raise about $150 million, although RockawayX has not officially confirmed this amount.

Also this week, it was reported that BitGo acquired the institutional trading business of NYDIG along with client contracts and a team of approximately 30 employees. The amount of the deal is not disclosed. The acquisition will expand BitGo's capabilities in derivatives, financing, and structured products, while NYDIG will focus on energy, Bitcoin mining, and infrastructure for high-performance computing.

Accelerators, Grants, and DAO Funding

On August 25, 2026, YZi Labs introduced the participants of the EASY Residency Season 4 program. A total of 24 startups were selected from categories such as Web3, AI, and biotechnology. According to the release, each of the projects will receive $500,000 in funding and additional support.

Below is a list of startups that exclusively belong to the Web3 sector. For our digest, we did not include Zerodrift, XHunt, xAPI, Roostoo, De¹, and Meddcom AI.

XStable - a platform for trading gold and currencies with leverage directly through blockchain. It combines market quotes and high liquidity, while artificial intelligence is used to identify trading opportunities, manage risks, and execute transactions.

ViFi Labs - creates a decentralized currency market for developing economies, allowing for quick exchanges of dollar stablecoins for digital versions of local currencies. The project primarily targets payment companies, banks, and participants in cross-border trade.

Surgepay - a service for Indians living abroad, enabling them to pay bills in India via WhatsApp. Funds are transferred using stablecoins and converted into rupees at market rates; the settlement is planned to occur in less than two minutes.

Spectrum Nexus - a payment infrastructure for transferring funds between cryptocurrencies and fiat money. The company combines currency exchange, international transfers, stablecoin settlements, and corporate card issuance in one system that operates around the clock.

SmartX - a trading platform that analyzes user actions and market data to select the most relevant trading signals and opportunities. Currently, the service operates with prediction markets and plans to connect with other platforms for trading digital assets.

Primus Labs (formerly PADO) - develops privacy technologies for financial transactions on public blockchains. Primus solutions allow for hiding balances and transfer amounts while maintaining the ability to verify transaction correctness and comply with financial organization requirements.

Nxos - a financial service for companies conducting international settlements in both fiat currencies and stablecoins. It combines banking details, digital asset storage, exchanges between them, and international payments in one account.

Nexroute - infrastructure for more efficient execution of exchanges on decentralized platforms. The system finds the best route for a transaction among hundreds of liquidity sources and allows trading applications to receive a portion of the additional profit generated during transaction processing.

Neutral Trade - a platform that brings professional quantitative trading strategies to blockchain and makes them accessible through investment vaults. Among them are market-neutral strategies, arbitrage, credit products, and strategies for market growth or decline.

Nara - creates a short-term lending system for companies making international payments. Its NaraUSD is backed by a portfolio of short-term financing for real cross-border payments and is designed for both liquidity storage and income generation.

Liquorice - provides liquidity and short-term lending to professional participants in decentralized markets. Instead of holding funds in multiple wallets in advance, a participant can borrow the needed amount from a common pool just before executing a transaction.

Kravata - an infrastructure company for working with stablecoins in Latin America. It enables banks and financial services to connect digital asset storage, exchange for local currencies, international payments, and customer verification without having to build the entire system themselves.

FinTax - a platform for accounting, taxation, and auditing transactions with digital assets. It helps companies and financial organizations gather data from various sources, generate reports, and meet tax and regulatory requirements.

Facto - a payment infrastructure that allows spending stablecoins and other digital assets directly from an existing account or income vault. Users do not need to transfer money in advance to a separate card balance: the system checks available funds at the moment of purchase and organizes subsequent settlement.

ElfomoFi --- a decentralized trading infrastructure that aims to bring blockchain pricing quality closer to that of large centralized exchanges. Professional liquidity providers manage prices and capital, while users can invest in such strategies through specialized vaults.

Alloco --- a platform for creating and listing investment products on the blockchain, similar in structure to exchange-traded funds. It allows for the packaging of baskets of stocks, thematic strategies, real assets, and other investment ideas with transparent evaluation and calculation rules.

Aile --- creates a decentralized currency market for regional stablecoins, pegged not only to the dollar but also to other national currencies. The system combines the liquidity of currency brokers, decentralized platforms, and the stablecoin issuers themselves to facilitate exchanges directly on the blockchain.

D0 --- a payment infrastructure that helps cryptocurrency trading and investment services accept conventional local payment methods in developing countries. Through a single connection, the platform integrates bank transfers, e-wallets, stablecoins, and withdrawals in local currency.

Top Investors

In this category, the undisputed leader is YZi Labs due to its incubation program. All other investors have made one deal each.
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What Was in Focus This Week?

The leader this week is the DeFi sector. In second place is CeFi, and in third place are blockchain services.
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As a reminder, last week we recorded nine investment deals. The total amount of funding raised from those that disclosed details was $1.3 billion.