Fundraising: Record Rush into Bitcoin

What has caught my attention the most over the past two weeks is Multicoin. capital’s Rare bitcoin BTC

+0.47%
transaction.

In the first edition of this newsletter I discussed The Bitcoin ecosystem is one of four. big catch the trend VC Pay attention this year. In particular, Bitcoin’s current appeal was compelling enough for Multicoin Capital to take an unusual route last week. head An initial funding round of $7 million for a Bitcoin-based application platform called Arch Network. Multicoin Capital recently also invested On the Bitcoin Scaling Network mezos $21 million funding round. Historically, the company I was particularly active within. Solana brush

+2.98%
and Ethereum ETH

+1.28%
Ecosystem Invested Early in Solana Labs itself There are also notable Ethereum projects such as StarkWare.

This shows that major VC firms are increasingly exploring opportunities due to the recent growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Kyle Samani, Managing Partner at Multicoin Capital, said the Bitcoin ecosystem is experiencing: “developer renaissance” with the coming bitcoin Taproot upgrade and Ordinals protocol.

For some developers, building financial tools on Bitcoin is even more attractive. that It is the oldest and most secure blockchain, Samani said.

Bitcoin started as a peer-to-peer payment system in 2009. but After that, things got a lot more interesting. Taproot Upgrade In November 2021, it made smart contracts the largest blockchain by market capitalization. Then, in January 2023, developer Casey Rodarmor bitcoin ordinal It is a protocol that allows people to create NFTs. “epitaph” In Bitcoin. A few months later, an anonymous developer known as Domo introduced BRC-20, an experimental token standard using Ordinals. allowed Bitcoin’s fungible token. Last month Rodarmor Rune Protocolsimilar BRC-20, However, it is much more efficient for trading new tokens in Bitcoin. These technological advancements open up new use cases for Bitcoin, enabling more startups and More VC investment.

Arch and Mezo are just two Bitcoin-related projects. What I recently received VC funding. Other notables include Bitcoin scaling infrastructure developer Alpen Labs and Bitcoin-based DeFi platform ALEX. overall, we are This year, there were more than 90 transactions involving Bitcoin, a record high. bitcoin One Year in History — According to the block professional Funding Data Dashboard.

“femalerather Innovation is surging as developers quickly build things like NFTs and lending markets on Bitcoin. this method There There are many more investments available besides BTC.” Samani said.

Bitcoin’s limited programmability

While the Bitcoin ecosystem expands, Bitcoin is expected to continue to lag behind Solana and Ethereum due to its limited programmability.According to Samani.

“that much programmable design space Bitcoin’s “It’s much smaller than Solana or Ethereum,” he said. “These platforms are designed to be programmable from the ground up. That means it will always have an inherent advantage over Bitcoin. Therefore, we expect the Bitcoin ecosystem to lag behind Solana and Ethereum in terms of applications simply because it has some fundamental handicaps.”

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