Foreign sources cite data compiled by the Dubai encryption lawyer, Irina Heaver, and his team, that in the first half of 2026, the total amount disclosed by the encryption industry amounted to $11.2 billion, with almost all of the funds going to regulated, licensed operations rather than unlicensed pilot projects highlighted by the earlier encryption industry.

Funds are concentrated in three categories of operations

According to NeosLegal, 377 disclosures were made between January and June 2026. The three most expensive tracks are the payment and stabilization currency, the forecast market, and the encryption exchange and trading platform. These operations generally require licensing or regulatory approval.

  • Payment and stabilization currency: $3.7 billion
  • Projected market: $2 billion
  • Exchanges and trading platforms: $1.7 billion

According to the article, this set of data reflects a marked shift in preferences in the financing market. The “unlicensed narrative” that attracted capital in the past is giving way to the type of project that places more emphasis on compliance, access and commercialization.

Wall Street plus mainstream financial institutions.

According to the list of investors, traditional financial institutions such as Blackstone, Apollo, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and NASDAQ are found in the financing or M & As transactions of regulated encrypted companies. According to the article, MasterCard bought the Stabilized Currency Payment Company BVNK at $1.8 billion; ADIA, the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund, was also involved in a $355 million round of institutional block chain financing in Canton Network.

The forecast market is the most prominent of them. Kalshi completed $1 billion in financing in May with investments in Redwood capital, Morgan Stanley, Ark Invest and a16z. Polymarket received $600 million in financing from ICE, an intercontinental exchange. According to the text, the market is projected to be financed every month in the first half of 2026, for a total of 6 months.

The license plates started to be priced as assets.

According to several interviewees, the market is now paying not only for products but also for licences and entry thresholds. The Sigma Capital management partner, Vineet Budki, states that the code can be copied very quickly, but it often takes 18 to 24 months to obtain a VARA license or MiCA pass, and millions of dollars to invest.

Under this logic, licence plates are no longer only a compliance cost, but rather a scarce resource that opens up a competitive gap. But Budki also believes that this is not just a “regulated transaction”, but an essentially income transaction, more like a ticket to market.

Institutional funds are not synchronized with retail demand

The article also gives different voices. Chief Executive Officer Bitget Gracie Chen stated that financing data could only reflect institutional capital flows and not necessarily provide a complete picture of user behaviour. She stated that 95 per cent of Bitget ' s monetized stock products were traded by individual users, mostly in small, round-the-clock transactions, and that that part of the demand did not necessarily occur on a platform for large-scale financing.

Heaver also mentioned that the statistics only calculated the amount of the disclosed financing and that the undisclosed rounds were treated on a zero basis, so that $11.2 billion might be below the actual level. At the same time, she said that the six-monthly data were still only phased and that it would take longer to observe whether they constituted a change in the long-term market structure.