According to a new report by international consulting firm KPMG, investments in cryptocurrency and blockchain are on the rise due to the ever-growing interest of investors.

One of the world's largest auditing firms, KPMG, published a study titled “Pulse of Fintech, H1 2021,” focused on the investment landscape in various fintech areas during the first half of the year. According to the document, in the first half of 2021, 2,456 investment deals worth $98 billion were concluded. The report notes that one of the leading trends this year in the fintech sector is the explosive growth of investments in cryptocurrency and blockchain.

In the first half of 2021, 548 investment deals were signed, including venture capital deals, mergers and acquisitions, and equity participation in crypto and blockchain companies. The total investment value for January-June 2021 is $8.7 billion, which is twice as much as the total value of 580 investment deals concluded throughout 2020 ($4.3 billion).

The largest investment deals in the first half of 2021 were funding rounds in projects such as BlockFi, Paxos, Blockchain.com and Bitso.

“Cryptocurrency and blockchain is exploding globally. There’s so much happening in the space right now, between the eCNY project running in China, Facebook’s Diem, a number of ecosystem initiatives — not to mention all the different trading platforms raising money. Digital currencies and virtual assets are a big, big topic of conversation. I think for the rest of this year at least, crypto will be a very hot ticket for investors," global co-leader at KPMG International Anton Ruddenklau mentioned.

According to the text of the report, investors now have “a much better understanding not only about crypto assets, but also the operational and procedural side of crypto — from custody and storage to storekeeping and the competitiveness and maturity of service providers."