As we enter March and the start of spring, volatility in public markets has risen noticeably.
The VIX is currently around 25, up nearly 18% over the past five days and climbing sharply from sub-20 levels earlier in the week. This recent expansion in volatility reflects increasing uncertainty and repositioning among allocators. Higher volatility typically causes greater selectivity across risk markets, including private investing.
Rising volatility does not indicate a systemic crisis. It signals that investors are becoming more cautious about risk, more focused on balance sheet strength, and more discriminating in where they commit capital (more on VIX dynamics here).
Venture markets remain in a disciplined deployment phase rather than a recovery boom. According to recent industry analysis, total US VC fundraising in 2025 fell to roughly $66 billion across 537 funds, a sharp decline from 2021 peaks, even as total dry powder remains near $1.3 trillion. Capital is not gone, but it is concentrated. LPs are favoring managers with realized distributions and proven DPI, while emerging managers face extended fundraising cycles (Insights4VC, Early 2026 review).
In crypto specifically, deployment has continued at a measured pace. Early 2026 has already seen more than $2 billion invested into blockchain startups, with late stage rounds accounting for the majority of capital deployed (CryptoRank Analytics). Deal counts remain below cycle highs, and fundraising for new crypto-native funds is selective, but not frozen. The market is functioning, just under tighter underwriting standards.
The current venture environment can be summarized as:
Dry powder remains high, but LP capital is concentrated among top-performing managers
Late stage financings dominate dollar volume, while early stage persists at rational valuations
Liquidity constraints and limited exits are shaping deployment pacing
Infrastructure, payments, and institutional-facing crypto companies attract the strongest interest
The reset that began in 2023 has evolved into a structurally more disciplined market where capital is available, but conditional on execution, traction, and credible paths to liquidity.
If you are navigating this more selective venture environment and need a custom SPV, or are considering launching a focused mini or proprietary fund to deploy into current opportunities, schedule time with us and let’s discuss how to structure it efficiently.
One theme gaining momentum in the market is the rise of agentic commerce and payment rails that support autonomous economic activity. As Pantera Capital explains in its long-form piece on financial infrastructure, value flows are shifting from human-driven interactions to machine-native transactions, where services, APIs, and agents can exchange money as easily as they exchange data.
This trend is grounded in new standards and rails that make payments fast, programmable, and frictionless for services and autonomous agents. Key areas include:
HTTP-native payments that embed value transfer into standard web requests
Pay-per-use monetization for APIs, datasets, and compute resources
Microtransactions priced as low as fractions of a cent for machine use
Onchain settlement that finalizes in milliseconds with near-zero chargeback risk
One concrete example of this infrastructure is x402, an open payment protocol developed by Coinbase. x402 repurposes the HTTP 402 Payment Required status code to enable instant stablecoin payments directly over HTTP, letting developers, services, and AI agents transact autonomously without accounts, manual billing, or subscription middleware. It supports micropayments and machine-to-machine transactions in a way legacy rails cannot.
Protocols like x402 are already being integrated into broader agent-focused systems where AI assistants, bots, and automated services can discover, pay for, and settle access to APIs or digital resources in real time — a key piece of the emerging agentic commerce stack.
See us in Cannes!
We will be on the ground for EthCC[9], March 30 to April 2, 2026, connecting with founders, fund managers, and allocators across the ecosystem. If you are attending and want to talk through an upcoming allocation, SPV structure, or fund setup in person, let’s coordinate a time and discuss it face to face.
Invest together.
Best,
Arthur and the GCRx Team
