In May, institutional investments driven by Ethereum – KuCoin reached 1 billion dollars
Update June 14, 6:00 am UTC: This article has been updated to clarify the differences between institutional and retail investments.
KuCoin's research arm published a report saying it saw more than $1 billion in investments in May, down slightly from the previous month.
On June 13, KuCoin Research revealed 156 investments in May. Additionally, the crypto exchange's research arm reported that $1.02 billion in investment capital has flowed into the space.
This represents a 10.61% increase compared to May 2023. However, the figure represents a 6.4% decrease compared to April.
Ethereum, EVM blockchains and L2s keep lead.
In terms of investments, Ethereum, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains, and Layer-2 (L2) network projects remain popular among institutional investors. Despite this, non-EVM chains such as Bitcoin, Solana, Fantom and TON were also among the top 15 popular chains among investors in May.
Animoca Brands and OKX Ventures were among the most active investors last month. Animoka Brands is involved in 15 deals and OKX Ventures has invested in 11 projects. Cogent Ventures, SNZ Holdings and DWF Labs also entered May with 10, 8 and 7 deals respectively.
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A higher FDV trend leads retail investors to alternatives.
KuCoin Research believes retail investors turned to commemorative and celebrity tokens in May in response to concerns about the low float and high fully diluted (FDV) trend in crypto.
KuCoin believes that launching with high valuations and low distribution offerings has left investors with “very limited room”. Because of this, they were looking for alternatives. KuCoin Research wrote:
“Some market participants have turned their attention to character memes or celebrity meme tokens, relatively obscure low-market assets, and new narratives.”
The researchers noted that NotCoin (NOT) was one of the tokens that benefited from this change in May. KuCoin said that the launch of Notcoin last month contributed to its growth with all tokens since its inception.
On June 3, it became the fifth most traded crypto, beating the trading volume of the popular stablecoin USD Coin (USDC). The token's price reached a new all-time high of $0.02896 on June 2, pushing its market capitalization above $2 billion.
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