Despite a decline in initial coin offerings and the price of cryptocurrencies, the broader investment market for blockchain and cryptocurrency startups has never been stronger.

That’s according to figures published this week by blockchain research group Diar Ltd. The firm said blockchain and cryptocurrency startups have raised nearly $3.9 billion in venture capital for the first three quarters of the year, nearly triple the amount raised by companies in the space in all of 2017.

Of the VCs, Bitmain Technologies Inc., which recently filed to go public, led the amounts raised with a $400 million round led by Sequoia Capital. Bitmain was followed by $163 million for DFINITY, $133 million for Basis and $122 million for R3 CEV LLC. The 10 biggest rounds for the year to date account for $1.3 billion of the funding raising.

Across the board, there were 384 deals with as many as 2,000 investors involved with the median round coming in at $2.5 million, $1 million higher than in 2017.

The biggest investors for the year to date include Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital, Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group and Pantera, with DCG leading the pack with 110 deals.

U.S investors dominate, accounting for 79 percent of all investments followed by China at 12 percent and both South Korea and Singapore at 2 percent each.

The increase in venture capital funding versus ICOs, which are down 70 percent this year so far, is primarily attributed to the broad crash in cryptocurrencies since the beginning of the year. “The majority of tokens have dropped in price by more than 90 percent from their all-time highs,” Diar noted.

Tightening regulations imposed on ICOs have also driven companies seeking to raise money back to traditional venture capital.

“Non-equity ICOs are not only scrutinized by the regulators but the founders also have very misaligned incentives as there is no contractual obligation to deliver a product – a reality that to date seems to be the case with few launches, and even less adoption,” the authors said.

Photo: pictures-of-money/Flickr