Author: Bibi News

Messari was once the crypto industry's closest data platform to Bloomberg, with a peak valuation of $300 million.

Its founder, Ryan Selkis, was the first to expose Mt. Gox's insolvency. After gaining fame from this revelation, he founded Messari, aiming to bring together data, research, and disclosures from the crypto world into a professional platform. It covers over 40,000 crypto assets, and its annual Mainnet conference in New York is one of the industry's most important summits.

In September 2022, the crypto division of hedge fund giant Brevan Howard led its Series B funding round, with Point72 and Coinbase Ventures also participating, valuing the company at approximately $300 million.

On June 12, 2026, Messari was acquired by competitor Blockworks for just over ten million US dollars.

This isn't just the situation of one company. With primary market valuations and the value of the coins in your wallet shrinking dramatically, has the entire crypto industry reached its point of collective repricing?

Crypto companies collectively downsize

In July 2024, Messari founder Selkis resigned as CEO due to a series of controversial remarks, and co-founder Eric Turner took over. In March 2026, Turner also left, and CTO Diran Li took over. At the same time, the company carried out large-scale layoffs and shifted its focus to AI, announcing that it would become an AI-first company.

But AI wasn't just a transformation direction for Messari; it was also one of the reasons for its decline. Messari's core products were research reports and data processing. What used to take an analyst a week to write an industry report could now be completed in a few hours using AI tools. When research costs approached zero, the business of selling research reports became increasingly difficult to monetize. This wasn't a cyclical difficulty, but a structural threat.

Ultimately, Messari's data platform and API were merged into Blockworks, bringing an end to its eight-year entrepreneurial journey.

But Messari is not an isolated case.

Between 2025 and 2026, a quieter and deeper change is taking place: companies that don't issue their own tokens and rely on selling products and services to make money are also struggling to survive.

Data platforms are shutting down. DappRadar, operating for seven years, tracking over 18,000 decentralized applications across 93 chains, and boasting 500,000 monthly active users, announced its closure in November 2025, citing "financial unsustainability." On-chain analytics platform Parsec, operating for five years, shut down in February 2026. CoinGecko is in talks for a complete sale and has hired investment bank Moelis as an advisor.

Media outlets are being sold off at bargain prices or laying off staff. CoinDesk, a benchmark in crypto media, was once rumored to be worth $300 million, but in August 2023 it laid off 45% of its editorial team, and in November of the same year it was acquired by Bullish for approximately $75 million. Bankless, one of the most influential brands in the crypto podcast industry, with over 1,300 episodes and $35 million in VC funding, quietly laid off most of its team this May.

Blockworks, which acquired Messari, also shut down its entire news division in October 2025, focusing all its resources on its data business. Its founder put it bluntly: users are increasingly using data as their primary source of information, rather than news.

Dune, an on-chain data company, will lay off 25% of its staff in May 2026.

VCs stopped investing.

Since 2017, more than 800 crypto investment funds have been established globally. Only about half are still operating today. By 2025, 63% of crypto hedge funds are projected to lose money.

New funds are also struggling to raise money. Only eight new crypto VC funds were established in Q1 2026, the fewest since Q3 2020, with fundraising amounting to only 12% of the peak in 2022. From October 2025 to April 2026, monthly crypto VC investment plummeted from $3.85 billion to $660 million, a drop of over 80% in six months.

Where did the money go? It went to AI. In 2025, AI VC funding reached $192.7 billion, exceeding half of the global total for the first time. A partner at Robot Ventures, the crypto fund founded by the founder of Compound, put it bluntly: "AI has sucked up the oxygen; it's stealing the attention of talent and LPs. Many people who should have been starting crypto businesses are now going to run AI companies."

People are leaving too. Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, who manages $5.9 billion in assets and was one of Solana's earliest and most steadfast institutional investors, announced his departure in February to move into the AI and robotics field.

In a tweet he later deleted, he wrote: "Cryptocurrency isn't as interesting as many people (including myself) once imagined." Even Paradigm, once one of the purest crypto VCs, has begun to expand its investments into AI and robotics.

The crypto VC funds that invested heavily between 2020 and 2022, during a period of high valuations, have yet to recoup their investments for their limited partners (LPs). LPs are no longer reinvesting, funds are unable to raise new money, cannot invest in new projects, startups cannot secure funding, their products fail, and they either close down or are sold off at a loss. This is a complete chain of events, and it is now completing its final stages in the primary crypto market.

A partner at Dragonfly Capital used one word to describe the current environment: mass extinction.

Perhaps this is a good sign.

Bitcoin has fallen nearly 48% from its high of $126,000 last October to around $65,000 now. The altcoin bubble is bursting rapidly; Starknet, once valued at $8 billion, has seen its market capitalization plummet to $200 million, a 95% drop. Scroll, Wormhole, and Magic Eden have all fallen by more than 95%. Over 70% of tokens issued between 2021 and 2022 are now either worthless or have fallen to less than one-tenth of their peak value.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index fell to 5 in February, 11 in March, and 13 in early June, remaining in the "extreme fear" range for more than 50 consecutive days.

Historically, this index has only fallen below 10 three times: in December 2018, during the COVID-19 crash in March 2020, and in November 2022 when FTX collapsed. Following each instance, Bitcoin saw a more than 500% increase within three years, with the most extreme instance in 2018 seeing a 2050% increase.

Another quieter signal comes from on-chain data: long-term Bitcoin holders currently control nearly 80% of the circulating supply. While this percentage has been slowly increasing over time, it remained high and continued to rise even during the price's sharp correction of nearly 50% from its high of $126,000, a clear divergence from price action. This suggests that the market is currently dominated by long-term holders who are unwilling to sell.

Historically, when this ratio approaches or exceeds 75-80% and is accompanied by a deep price correction, it often corresponds to the bottom of a bear market.

Let's look at the primary market. The last time the number of crypto VC deals was this low was in 2020, before the DeFi Summer. The last time the number of new funds established was this low was also in 2020.

Dragonfly, which used the term "mass extinction," raised a new $650 million crypto fund in February against the market trend, exceeding its target by 30%. Its managing partner said, "Morale is low, fear is extreme, and the gloom of the bear market has descended." But what he's doing is continuing to invest. The last time Dragonfly raised funds during the most panicked period was in 2022; that fund invested in Polymarket and Ethena, becoming its best-performing fund in history.

Blockworks, which acquired Messari, just completed a $192 million funding round on April 29th, with its purpose clearly stated: to consolidate the encrypted data industry. It's not expanding its business; it's acquiring competitors at bargain prices.

Cryptocurrency prices have halved, the fear index has plummeted to single digits, the proportion of long-term holders is nearing its extreme, VC deals have returned to levels seen five years ago, and infrastructure companies are closing down or being sold off at bargain prices. Individually, each of these signals sounds pessimistic. However, the simultaneous occurrence of these signals has only happened three times in history, and each time has been followed by a new major cycle.

The drop from 300 million to 10 million seems to mark the end of an era. But every true bottom in a cycle doesn't look like an opportunity.

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