Bitcoin Layer 2 Bitfinity raises token round at $130 million valuation

Bitfinity, a blockchain project that… Bitcoin BTC

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Layer 2 network based on the Internet computer ICP

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protocol, raised a total of $7 million.

Investors included Polychain Capital, ParaFi Capital, Warburg Serres, Dokia Capital and Draft Ventures, Bitfinity co-founder Max Chamberlin told The Block in an interview. The financing was done in two parts – a seed round of approximately $1 million in 2021 and a growth round of the remainder of the amount closed last June – Chamberlin said. He added that both were token rounds, with the second round bringing Bitfinity’s valuation to $130 million.

Bitfinity chose to announce the funding at this time to generate anticipation ahead of the mainnet launch of its network, Chamberlin said. Currently, Bitfinity is in the testnet phase and plans to launch the mainnet later this month or early February, Chamberlin said.

What is Bitfinity?

Bitfinity is a Bitcoin scaling network built on the Internet Computer Protocol. The competitive advantage is that Ethereum ETH

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Virtual Machine compatible, allowing Ethereum developers to build Bitcoin-compatible decentralized applications on Bitfinity, Chamberlin said. “Bitfinity will process not only Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, but also EVM assets,” Chamberlin said, adding that “the Bitfinity EVM will enable the deployment of EVM dApps at speeds 100 times faster than Ethereum and at a fraction of the cost. ”

The growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem is seen as a major trend for 2024, driven by the growth of the Ordinals protocol last year. The protocol’s native ORDI token has reached a market cap of $1.5 billion, while BRC-20 tokens collectively hold a market cap of $3.43 billion with a trading volume of over $1 billion in the last 24 hours, according to the data from CoinGecko. Bitfinity aims to further improve decentralized financial operations on the Bitcoin blockchain, Chamberlin said.

Bitfinity ecosystem

Various dApps, including decentralized exchange Sonic, derivatives liquidity protocol Synthetix, and decentralized lending protocol Liquidity LQTY

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build on Bitfinity or plan to do so, Chamberlin said.

“As demand for Bitcoin integration increases, we believe Bitfinity’s EVM opens up the Bitcoin ecosystem to new use cases and applications,” Ben Forman, managing partner at ParaFi Capital, said in a statement. “Solidity developers can now take advantage of Bitfinity’s high throughput, low costs, and Bitcoin-native support.”

There are currently about 20 people working for Bitfinity, and Chamberlin looks to expand the team to about 25 people in the coming months after the mainnet launch to build and grow the ecosystem.

Regarding the Bitfinity token, Chamberlin said several exchanges are expected to offer it after the mainnet launch.