From Trades to Systems: Where Crypto Is Actually Getting Built

Key deals of the end of January 2026

South Dakota: When Bitcoin Enters the Balance Sheet

South Dakota is testing the edge of public finance. A newly introduced bill would allow the state to allocate up to 10% of government-managed funds into Bitcoin, giving pensions, trusts, and endowments with roughly $5–$16B under management direct exposure to the asset. 

Introduced by Logan Manhart, the proposal revives an idea that didn’t work out in 2025. Now it lands in a different macro moment that is defined by inflation pressure and a growing willingness among U.S. states to treat Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset rather than a speculative trade.

Mesh: Where Payments Become Infrastructure

Mesh raised $75M at a $1B valuation, bringing total capital above $200M, with Dragonfly leading and Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, SBI, and others joining. Mesh sits in a critical layer: a financial operating system that connects over 300 services (from Coinbase and MetaMask to Robinhood) handling crypto payments, asset transfers, account aggregation, and securities trading. The funding lands as capital shifts decisively toward infrastructure, betting that adoption won’t be won by new tokens, but by networks that make fragmented assets behave like a single, global system.

Talos: The Control Plane Institutions Were Waiting For

Talos is consolidating its role as institutional crypto’s control plane: $45M Series B extension, lifting the round to $150M and valuing the company at roughly $1.5B. New investors like Robinhood, Sony’s Innovation Fund, IMC, and QCP are joining existing backers such as a16z crypto, BNY Mellon, and Fidelity because Talos sits at the intersection institutions actually care about: trading, risk, liquidity, custody, and settlement, all stitched together into one workflow. As banks, asset managers, and platforms expand digital asset exposure, the constraint isn’t access anymore, it’s infrastructure that looks and behaves like institutional finance. Talos is absorbing that demand, and even settling part of the round in stablecoins signals how normalized on-chain rails are becoming at the enterprise level.

Escape Velocity: Decentralization moves off-chain and into the physical world

Escape Velocity is leaning into the part of crypto most investors are currently avoiding. The firm closed a ~$62M second fund in December to back DePIN and crypto-native infrastructure, even as tokens tied to decentralized physical networks sit near cycle lows. Backed by Marc Andreessen, Ribbit’s Micky Malka and Cendana, the raise is a deliberate counter-consensus move: decentralization pushed beyond software into real-world systems like energy, connectivity and sensing. It’s about infrastructure that actually ships, with incentives layered on after utility exists. For Escape Velocity, the reset in DePIN valuations is the entry point for backing founders who are building physical networks slowly, expensively, and without hype, exactly where most capital has lost patience.

Crypto is transitioning from a speculative phase toward a more infrastructure-driven stage of development. Governments are testing it on balance sheets, startups are building connective tissue rather than new assets, institutions are backing platforms that look and behave like mature financial systems. Venture capital is rotating toward areas where progress is slow, capital-intensive, and hard to fake. The next cycle is about what can actually hold weight.