Despite the widespread sense of regulatory confusion and cryptocurrencies’ enormous value losses in recent months, investment from venture capital (VC) firms and hedge funds has grown significantly.

It is widely believed that regulatory clarity will have a snowball effect on institutional investors, however, the sector has already seen the pace of investments pick up sharply this year. Data from Crypto Fund Research shows as of June 15, there were 216 investments in 2018, versus 236 for all of last year and the amount invested so far this year, $637.7m, has already surpassed the 2017 total of $496.7m.

Crypto Fund Research, a cryptocurrency and blockchain research group formed in 2017, has developed the data from various sources and its own research.

The firm ranks each VC using four separate criteria: overall investment activity, capital outlay, blockchain investment experience (time since first investment) and recent activity (blockchain investments made in the past 12 months).

Its report shows Digital Currency Group leads the list of the Top 50 Blockchain VCs. The company came out top in the first iteration of its top 50 blockchain venture capital firms in the world. The New York-based Digital Currency Group, which invests exclusively in crypto and blockchain companies, has made 58 investments total and 15 over the past 12 months. It has invested $78m overall.

Pantera Capital, based in Menlo Park, Calif., came second, and Blockchain Capital, of San Francisco, came in third. Andreessen Horowitz, which recently announced a $300m crypto fund was fourth on the list.

“The four criteria we used reflects not only total investment but also how long they’ve been investing in blockchain and how active they are today, not just a year or three ago,” Josh Gnaizda CEO of CryptoFundResearch says:

The industry is changing rapidly. So what’s most accurate today won’t be as correct next month. We do, however, intend to keep this page updated frequently. That’s why we really wanted to establish criteria that can be replicated.

The company hopes its data will provide clarity in an area where there hasn’t been a lot of reliable public data.