This week, Coinbase launched Bitcoin-backed loans. Coinbase’s Bitcoin-backed loans allow users to borrow money using their Bitcoin holdings as collateral. Here's how it works:

• Eligibility: Currently available to US customers — users must have Bitcoin in their Coinbase account to use as collateral.

• Loan Amount: Users can borrow up to $100,000 in USDC based on the amount of Bitcoin they have available. The loan amount is determined by the collateral value of the Bitcoin.

• Collateral: When users initiate a loan, Bitcoin is converted to Coinbase Wrapped BTC (cbBTC) and moved on-chain into a Morpho smart contract where it serves as collateral. Morpho is an open market onchain lending protocol on Base.

Read more here.

News

• ElizaOS – an open-source protocol designed for the creation, deployment, and management of autonomous AI agents (built by ai16dao) — is live on Merlin.

• Tether sues Swan Bitcoin in an ongoing bitcoin mining dispute (Blockspace).

• Bitcoin Magazine covers Liquidium: “In about 12 months, Liquidium has executed over 75,000 loans, representing more than $360 million in total loan volume, and paid over $6.3 million in native BTC interest to lenders.”

• Runes market cap sits at around $1.17B, down from a high of about $2B (GeniiData).

• Bitcoin L2 overview: Transactions and Unique Addresses from Signal21.

Other

• Trump to designate crypto as a national priority as Bitcoiners speculate the potential of a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.

• MicroStrategy continues to buy Bitcoin. On January 6th, MicroStrategy bought another 1,070 Bitcoin, bringing their total holdings to 447,470 BTC.

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Happy New Year! We set out to pick one statistic to summarize 2024 in the Bitcoin Builder world.

We landed on the following metric, supported by Bitcoin Layers: 48,000 New BTC were supplied on Layers in 2024.

2024 started with about 227,000 BTC supplied on Bitcoin Layers. We ended the year with about 275,000 BTC supplied. At current prices, this is about 4.7 billion dollars.

Looking further into the data, things get more interesting.

Bitcoin holders supplied more BTC to BTC layers, AND it was spread over far more players than at the beginning of the year. Most notably, BitGO WBTC started the year with about 158,000 BTC, and it ended the year with 132,0000 BTC.

While WBTC decreased, other Bitcoin Layers increased.

Will this trend continue in 2025?

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News

Here’s a collection of 2024 summaries from various Bitcoin Layers, h/t to CryptoMemento’s article.

• Core DAO shares a 2024 summary, noting over 6,500 BTC staked.

• Bitlayer shares a 2024 summary, noting $725M+ total value locked.

• BOB’s founder, Alexei, shares a summary of Bitcoin DeFi and BOB.

• Stacks’ founder, Muneeb, shares a 2024 summary and 2025 priorities, including the launch of sBTC.

• Rootstock shares its 2025 Roadmap.

• Blockspace Media highlights one of its top stories for 2024: “OP_CTV re-emerges as popular frontrunner in soft fork discussion.”

More News

• Avalon Labs announces the launch of USDa on BOB.

• Bitcoin Layers reviews Corn, “a permissioned rollup that leverages a derivative of BTC as its gas token.”

Other

• Bitcoin hashrate hits an all-time high.

• There is a lot of speculation on a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. Polymarket gives it a 23% chance.

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This week, the Stacks ecosystem launched sBTC. It’s a 1:1 Bitcoin-backed tokenized BTC product. sBTC is focused on security and has introduced a set of 15 signers responsible for approving all sBTC deposit and withdrawal operations. Read more here.

The sBTC Rewards Program Page notes that users earn 5% APY on their Bitcoin, paid in sBTC. Blockworks writes, “By bridging bitcoin into sBTC, users become eligible for rewards (bitcoinismore.org) paid out in bitcoin, not points or inflationary tokens.”

Where does the yield come from? Per the Rewards page, “The sBTC Rewards Program is powered by a group of Stackers "Stacking" STX to a designated reward address, contributing their BTC rewards to the program.”

Speaking of Tokenized BTC, we have a special announcement.

This week, BBA released a report called State of Tokenized BTC: A $1 Trillion Opportunity.

It’s a 26-page report analyzing the tokenized BTC ecosystem, written by analyst Tanguy Girault.

Download the report here.

News

• Lava secures a series A from Founders Fund and Khosla.

• The Bitcoin Layers team says they were wrong about how they organized Bitcoin Layers. “Tl;dr, we’re going to be reviewing every protocol that allows users to leverage BTC-backed tokens related to their trust assumptions past the bitcoin L1.”

• First Bitcoin Transaction on Solana Validated by Zeus Network.

• BOB Receives OP Grant (750,000 OP) to Grow Bitcoin DeFi on the Superchain.

• David Seroy of Alpen Labs breaks down BitVM2 in a whiteboard session.

• Vitalik talks about Bitcoin Layers on Steady Lads.

Other

• Texas proposes a Bitcoin Reserve.

• Per Blockworks: MicroStrategy spent $17.5B on bitcoin in the last 2 months

Happy $100k Bitcoin Week!

This week, Alpen Labs introduced the Strata Bridge. Strata Bridge is based on BitVM2 and it aims to unlock access to BTC in “programmable, private, and scalable environments.”

Hans (@trackoor) gives the following summary of the BitVM improvements:

- No pre-funded operators: Reusable collateral eliminates funding overhead, fully trustless.
- Optimistic-ZK hybrid: Groth16 proofs → TapScripts, invalid = slashed.
- Canonical validation: Light clients validate chain w/ minimal trust & attack surface.

Congrats to the Alpen team!

News:

• Sui teams up with Babylon Labs, Lombard, and Cubist to bring BTC to Sui DeFi.

• Atomic Swaps come to Rootstock.

• Zeus Network partners with Solv protocol to bring Bitcoin liquidity to Solana.

• Tether to partner with Cantor Fitzgerald for multibillion-dollar, Bitcoin-backed US dollar loans.

• BitcoinOS executes the first ZK Bridge transaction on Bitcoin. Bitcoin Layers’ Janusz has some comments on the technicalities of it.

• Stablecoins on Bitcoin could capture between $108B - and $483B in market cap by 2030 per UTXO management.

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Other:

• Tornado cash wins! A win for privacy.

• Saylor presents the Bitcoin corporate strategy to Microsoft.

• MARA Acquires a Texas Wind Farm for Bitcoin Mining.

This week, Blockspace Media shared a great post about the resurgence of Runes, a UTXO-based token protocol on Bitcoin.

Runes were introduced in April of this year. Until this week, their market cap has been below BRC20s, a separate token standard introduced before Runes.

Yes, this market cap is based on meme coins like $DOG. However, Runes do account for significant activity on Bitcoin.

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As Blockspace notes, “Today Runes alone account for over half of the transactions on Bitcoin, and they are clearly in the driver’s seat for now for next-block fee demand.”

News:

• Bitlayer contributes a “manual SNARK verifier chunker to BitVM open source,” which they claim is the last missing piece of a complete BitVM implementation.

• Bitcoin Layer, Core (an EVM sidechain), introduces Dual Staking, allowing users to stake Bitcoin and CORE to maximize rewards.

• Bitfinity (a fast EVM for Bitcoin) launches on mainnet.

• The tokenized Bitcoin market continues to get shaken up: Coinbase delists WBTC.

• Shinobi writes, “How viable are BitVM Based Pegs” in Bitcoin Magazine.

Other:

• Bitcoin price closes in on $100k.

• SEC Commissioner Jaime Lizárraga plans to resign in January.

• SEC Chairman Gary Gensler to resign in January.

• MicroStrategy Bolsters Bitcoin Bet with $3B in Notes.

The Bitcoin Layers thesis is taking shape. According to Bitcoin Layers, there are over 40,000 BTC locked on various Bitcoin layers. At current price levels, this is over $3.5 billion trusted in Bitcoin Layers.

For context, in March of 2024, there were about 7,500 BTC locked on Bitcoin Layers. This represents a 5x increase in less than a year.

The Bitcoin Layers website shares the breakdown of BTC allocated to each Bitcoin Layer.

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While there has been a substantial increase in BTC locked, this is a drop in the bucket of the total Bitcoin market capitalization (around $1.7 trillion).

News

• Thesis crosses 5k tBTC supply.

• Citrea announces winners from its hackathon with projects focused on Nostr, DeFi, and privacy.

• Coinbase’s tokenized Bitcoin, cbBTC, reaches $1B Market Cap in 57 Days.

• Rootstock announces Rootstock Swaps. It’s a Rootstock to Lightning bridge.

• Portal Ventures, which has historically invested in Bitcoin companies, raises a $75M fund.

• BitcoinFi Weekly recaps OP_NEXT. The post summarizes Peter Todds’ definition of a Bitcoin Layer 2: “A genuine Layer 2 must contain conglomerated transactions with reactive security, enabling unilateral withdrawals without counterparty trust.”

Other

• Bitcoin reaches another all-time high in US dollar terms.

• Matt Huang writes Bitcoin for the Sovereign, a short essay on the race to build BTC reserves.

• Publicly traded AI firm Genius Group adopts Bitcoin as primary treasury asset.

• Solidion Technology, a publicly traded company, announces a strategic Bitcoin allocation.

• Pennsylvania introduces a bill to create a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve for the state.

This week, the US election dominated the news. We will discuss some of the election’s impacts on Bitcoin later in the newsletter. But first, Coinbase made a big announcement — they officially launched cbBTC on Solana (see Coindesk’s overview of the launch).

Since the collapse of FTX, Solana has not had a strong tokenized Bitcoin product. Coinbase hopes to change this with cbBTC on Solana.

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cbBTC has already launched on Coinbase’s Ethereum L2, Base. Coinbase typically focuses on Ethereum, so bringing cbBTC to Solana surprised many in the space.

News:

• Blockspace Media hosts OP_NEXT “The Bitcoin Scaling Conference” tomorrow (Saturday). Watch the live stream here.

• Bitcoin Ecosystem (@BitcoinEcoTK) shares a Lombard Onchain Overview. Lombard, a BTC Restaking protocol, currently has over $715M in TVL.

• Block shuts down TBD, its Bitcoin-focused identity and trust layer. It plans to focus on Bitcoin mining.

Other:

Here are a few news items related to Donald Trump winning the presidential election in the US:

• Bernie Moreno, a pro-crypto Senate candidate from Ohio, beats anti-crypto candidate Sherrod Brown. Read Bernie’s profile on standwithcrypto.com.

• Following the election, Bitcoin broke all-time highs.

• US Senator Cynthia Lummis doubles down on the initiative to “build a strategic Bitcoin reserve."

• Bankless releases a good podcast with Alex Thorn covering some major ramifications of the election.

• Bitcoin Magazine writes a sobering, contrarian take: “Trump is not going to be a good thing for Bitcoin.”

It’s been another busy week in Bitcoin. We saw product upgrades, VC capital raised, and BTC almost reached its all-time high price in dollars.

This week, the Stacks Nakamoto Upgrade went live. It’s a significant milestone for the ecosystem.

With the upgrade, Stacks transactions have Bitcoin finality — once confirmed, they are at least as irreversible as Bitcoin's. Transaction times have also been significantly reduced. Finally, Nakamoto has set the foundation for sBTC, a tokenized version of Bitcoin.

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Congrats to the Stacks ecosystem! Read more here.

News:

• In October, well over $60M was raised to advance the Bitcoin ecosystem. Citrea closed out the month with its $14M Series A, led by Founders Fund.

• Saturn ships the first trustless AMM swap transaction on Bitcoin’s base layer, made possible by Arch network.

• Runes are coming to Bitcoin Layers. Pups (a Runes meme coin) is live on BOB.

• Blockspace Media records a great episode diving into OP_CAT. Check it out.

• Let’s revisit what we called “the most important chart in the Bitcoin Builder ecosystem,” created by Bitcoin Layers. It lists the Bitcoin Layers with BTC locked (Bsquared has 12,000 locked, Merlin has over 6,000 locked, and Core has over 6,000 locked).

Other:

• BTC closes in on all-time price highs.

• Florida’s CFO endorses a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

• BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF has surpassed $30 billion in assets. It’s the fastest-growing ETF in history.

This week, ZeroSync announced the formation of the BitVM Alliance. The group is committed to delivering the first BitVM Bridges by the end of the year.

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Members of the group include:

• Citrea

• Element

• Fiamma

• Strata

• ZeroSync

Why it matters: BitVM Alliance will attempt to verify a proof on Bitcoin, paving the way for trust-minimized Bitcoin bridges.

News:

• Restaked Bitcoin has surpassed $1B TVL.

• It’s fundraising season! Check out some companies and protocols that have raised money to advance the Bitcoin ecosystem.

• B Squared raises additional capital led by Spartan Labs, Animoca Ventures, Alliance, and P2 Ventures.

• Echo Protocol raises a pre-seed round. Echo Protocol is “the first Bitcoin liquid re-staking & yield layer on MoveVM.”

• Ordzaar raises $2M. Ordzaar is the first-ever SocialFi-powered Rune on BTC.

• Yala raises $8M. Yala’s “vision is to create a unified, interconnected DeFi ecosystem for Bitcoin to bridge the current liquidity gap.”

• ThorChain integrates with Ledger Live.

• BOB announces design for a "hybrid layer-2" network via Coindesk.

Other:

• Microsoft management is looking into buying BTC via Bitcoin Magazine.

This week, Blockstream raised $210M. Blockstream, founded by legendary Bitcoiner Adam Back, has raised the funds for a few purposes:

• To accelerate layer-2 development

• To expand mining ahead of the next Bitcoin cycle

• To grow their BTC treasury

Blockstream’s Layer 2 solution, Liquid, is a sidechain that focuses on confidential transactions and tokenized assets on Bitcoin.

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Congrats to the Blockstream team!

News:

• a16z releases its annual crypto report. Charlie Spears notes that Bitcoin builder interest has increased between 2023 and 2024

• Kraken enters the wrapped Bitcoin conversation, releasing kBTC

• Stacks chooses the Bitcoin block to activate Nakamoto. The expected time is October 29th

• OP_CAT may be coming sooner than expected. OP_CAT would be a big change for Bitcoin builders

• OP_NEXT, a Bitcoin scaling conference, will take place on November 9th in Boston. Check out the speaker lineup!

• Hermetica, a Bitcoin-backed stablecoin, announces a $1.7M funding round

Other:

• Venmo Partners with MoonPay for Crypto Purchases

• Bitcoin dominance reaches a new cycle high, not seen since April 2021

Babylon is back in the news after they completed their Cap-2, raising the TVL on Babylon to over $1.5B.

Let’s dive deeper into the numbers from Cap-2:

• Total BTC staked: 22,891

• BTC Delegations: 12.96K

• Stakers: 12.57K

• Total fees: 1.56 BTC

This brings the total BTC staked on Babylon to 23,891 BTC.

Projects like Lombard, Solv, and Bedrock have now delegated thousands of Bitcoin. Thanks to Bitcoin Ecosystem (@BitcoinEcoTK) for the analysis.

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Why it matters: there is clear demand for Bitcoin staking. Other Bitcoin Builders are seeing the opportunity.

News

• Bitlayer raises another $9M, bringing their total Series A round to $20M

• Coinbase users can now send Bitcoin to Taproot addresses, continuing Coinbase’s recent support of Bitcoin

• Is STARK on Bitcoin closer than ever? StarkWare shares progress on implementing a new verifier in Bitcoin script

• Zest Protocol announces BTCz, bringing onchain yield to BTC

• Bitcoin Layers analyzes tBTC against other wrapped Bitcoin tokens in their first report

• Are Runes back? Runes total market cap climbs above $1B, and Runes volume doubles on Magic Eden

• Solv launched the “Staking Abstraction Layer” (SAL): "SAL brings everything together, acting as a backbone for Bitcoin staking. It allows BTC holders to stake across different networks while earning yield."

Other

• Bitcoin-only financial services company Fold files S-4

• HBO’s Money Electric upsets the Bitcoin community. Bitcoin Magazine writes, “Money electric is an insult to bitcoin – cynical, stupid, and dangerous.”

BoostVC, Draper Associates, and Thesis announced the BitcoinFi Accelerator this week.

Key Benefits:

• Money: $150K funding for 5% equity

• Mentorship from experts like @TimDraper, @AdamDraper, @mhluongo, @muneeb, @domodata, @CReckhow, @La_Walla_, @tylev

• Go-to-Market Strategy & Networking

Focus Areas:

• Infrastructure

• DeFi

• SocialFi

Who Should Apply:

• Builders with an MVP

• Have raised less than $1M

• 3+ on a team

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If you’re a Bitcoin builder, check out the announcement for more info.

Speaking of fundraising, we’ve started to create a database of funded projects.

Check out some of the capital that went to Bitcoin builders this year (and please let us know who we missed!)

News

• Alpen unveils Strata. It’s a ZK rollup platform on Bitcoin.

• Moon is coming soon. It’s a Visa card that allows users to pay with Bitcoin and crypto wherever Visa is accepted.

• Bob Bodily writes an excellent summary of Anduro Coordinate.

• The data is coming in — Runes create less waste UTXOs than BRC-20, as predicted.

• The East has taken back the center of Bitcoin culture — Charlie Spears shares insights into Bitcoin in Asia.

Other

• Ohio State Senator Niraj Antani proposed legislation to allow crypto payments for state and local taxes per Decrypt.

• Bitcoin is a global liquidity barometer, writes Sam Callahan and Lyn Alden

The Bitcoin builder ecosystem continues to thrive. Here are some updates from this week.

First, Citrea goes live on public testnet. Citrea is a rollup on Bitcoin that uses Bitcoin as both the data availability and settlement layer.

Citrea created Clementine, a bridge design that uses BitVM. As such, Citrea does not require changes to Bitcoin.

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Here’s how the bridge works (from their docs): “Pegged BTC is held in the BitVM contract (leveraging Taproot) on Bitcoin network. Withdrawals are only authorized with valid ZK proofs, meaning no party can steal the pegged BTC from the bridge.”

Citrea is one of a few teams leveraging BitVM to scale Bitcoin. Congrats to the team!

Layers

• tBTC launched on Aave. Congrats to the tBTC team!

• Celestia, the modular data availability network, raised $100M.

• Bitcoiners launched Second, a company dedicated to scaling Bitcoin through Ark.

• Hermetica launched USDh, a Bitcoin-backed synthetic dollar on Stacks.

• PayPal enables Bitcoin for U.S. Businesses.

Other

• Tornado Cash case update: a judge rejected the Defense’s motion to compel discovery and their motion to dismiss charges, via Bitcoin Magazine.

• SEC approved the listing and trading of options on BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust.

• BlackRock asks Coinbase to process BTC withdrawals to a public address within 12 hours, via Bitcoin Magazine

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Bitcoin Layers, a Bitcoin scaling research platform, released a dashboard of Bitcoin locked on Bitcoin Layers.

A few quick observations:

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1). Over 26k Bitcoin is locked on Bitcoin Layers. That’s over $1.5B TVL. Since May, this number has steadily increased.

2). The BTC locked comes from about 10 Bitcoin Layers (as documented by Bitcoin Layers). Again, we’ve seen a steady rise since around May.

Layers:

• Marathon Digital’s Anduro released a new Bitcoin sidechain called Coordinate. Coordinate includes a 1:1 Bitcoin-backed asset called cBTC.

• Let’s take an early look into Coinbase’s cbBTC product. According to TVL metrics for Base on L2Beat, cbBTC has $55M TVL (~880 BTC Locked).

• Bitcoin Magazine’s Shinobi dives into Fractal Bitcoin, calling it a “misleading affinity.”

• The Stacks Nakamoto upgrade is progressing. Core Devs will pick a block for a Stacks chain hard fork in the coming days.

Other:

• Another country owns Bitcoin: Bhutan has amassed nearly $1 billion worth of BTC.

• Another publicly traded US company announced it was adopting Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset.

• US Congressmen Warren Davidson pressures Gary Gensler and the SEC.

Fractal Mainnet went live this week. Fractal aims to enhance Bitcoin scalability without compromising its integrity.

From Fractal’s docs: “Fractal leverages a recursive blockchain computing system that virtualizes Bitcoin Core, enabling infinite scalability while maintaining full consensus consistency with the Bitcoin main network.”

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Bitcoin Layers describes Fractal:

Fractal is a Bitcoin sidechain purpose built to scale bitcoin-native applications like Runes and BRC-20s. It leverages a novel consensus mechanism similar to merge-mining.

Layer 1 and Meta Protocols:

• Ordinals transactions are not what they used to be, via Signal21

Layers:

• BOB passes 10M transactions

• Coinbase launches cbBTC, its tokenized version of BTC

• Trust Machines launches Granite, a new Bitcoin lending protocol on Stacks using sBTC as the bridge

• Bitcoin Magazine’s Shinobi writes an article on Bitcoin Rollups

• Bitcoin Builders have come a long way in the past year. There are now 17 Bitcoin Layers live on Mainnet according to Bitcoin Layers. Let’s take a look.

Other:

• Last week, Bitcoin ETFs saw the highest outflows since March: $643 million

It was a great week for the Bitcoin Builder ecosystem as a whole. Zest Protocol launched BTCz, which allows users to deploy their BTC to earn a BTC yield. The yield is earned via Babylon — Babylon enables BTC holders to earn yield by validating PoS systems.

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In addition, BTCz uses Stacks for security. Stacks can read Bitcoin state. Therefore, Zest’s BTC staking contracts independently verify stake on Bitcoin L1 through Babylon without relying on third-party oracles.

Congrats to the Bitcoin Builders from Zest, Babylon, and Stacks!

Layers

• Core introduces LstBTC — a Bitcoin Liquid Staking Token on the Core blockchain.

• Stacks swaps are now available on the Xverse Wallet via Velar.

• Bitcoin Magazine publishes UTXO Research Report: State of the Bridges.

• Arch Network shared its litepaper: “Arch is a parallel execution layer that enhances Bitcoin’s capabilities by enabling fast, secure, and fully-verifiable smart contracts.”

• Bitlayer passes 7M transactions, according to Signal21.

• Here’s a look at total transactions and unique addresses across Bitcoin Layers, according to Signal21.

  

Other

• Thousands of businesses are now buying Bitcoin daily, according to River.

• Another South American country is interested in Bitcoin — Bitcoin Magazine writes about María Corina Machado’s (Venezuelan’s opposition leader) positive views on Bitcoin.

Nostr, an open-source protocol designed to create a decentralized, censorship-resistant social network, has received renewed attention following the imprisonment of Telegram’s CEO.

Nostr has integrated Bitcoin heavily into the product, especially with micropayments via Lightning. “Zaps” allow for small tips to be sent in addition to a “like” on the platform. Bitcoin Magazine covered Nostr’s progress at NostrWorld, a conference dedicated to Nostr in Riga, Latvia.

Increased attention to Nostr comes after Telegram’s CEO was jailed in France. Lyn Alden makes the point that Nostr may be more robust to censorship than a centralized system like Telegram.

Layers

• Lightspark announces Lightspark Extend, which connects Lightning to eligible US account holders in real time.

• Bitcoiners are coming to Asia. Korea Blockchain Week is first. Bitcoin Layers Bitlayer and Stacks have published their schedules.

• “TBTC is proposing to move all WBTC to the TBTC network in exchange for 15% of T supply, valued at ~$36m,” via 0xngmi.

• The Stacks Nakamoto activation took place this week. Read the Decrypt’s summary.

• Ark Labs raised a $2.5M pre-seed. Ark is “designed to work with Lightning to enable fast, low-cost and seamless payments on Bitcoin—without compromising on decentralization or self-custody.”

• ICP introduces ckBTC — a “multi-chain bitcoin twin” — another response to the changes at WBTC.

Other

• Trump leans more into crypto, aiming to make the US the “crypto capital of the world.”

Stablecoins have a total market cap of $165B, with Tether dominating the market. Stablecoins on Bitcoin are less than 0.1% of the total stablecoin market, as covered by the Bitcoin Frontier Fund.

Stablecoins present a significant business opportunity, and there is an opening to bring more stablecoins to Bitcoin. Ducat has raised $1.25M in VC capital to make this a reality.

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Congrats to the Ducat team!

Layer 1 and Meta Protocols

• Daily Runes transactions continue to hover around 300,000 per day based on data from Signal21.

Layers

• Babylon has started Bitcoin staking, attracting 1,000 BTC. The inflows increased meme pool transactions to over 1,000 sat/VB.

• As covered in last week’s newsletter, funds are moving out of WBTC. Currently, they’re finding a home in tBTC.

• It’s Bitcoin Layers season! Trevor Owens shares a post with an ecosystem map of Layer 2 scaling solutions. Bitcoin Layers also published an ecosystem map.

• Bitflow announces its DEX aggregator for the Stacks ecosystem.

• Introducing Corn — a new Bitcoin L2 that raised $6.7M, led by Polychain capital. However, skeptics have pointed out this is another “multiple trusted custodian” scheme.

• BitVM2 and BitVM Bridge are here! Here’s a summary by BOB’s Founder.

Other

• Bitcoin and crypto were largely ignored at the DNC this week. However, there are some signs from Democrats that their administration would be more friendly to the industry. More from Bitcoin Magazine.

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Coinbase has entered the Bitcoin DeFi chat. Coinbase teased that they were planning to develop a new wrapped Bitcoin product called Coinbase BTC (cbBTC).

Like it or not, when Coinbase enters the conversation, the crypto community listens.

If Coinbase launched a wrapped Bitcoin (likely on Base), it would bring more liquidity and users to Bitcoin. As Coinbase is one of the most popular exchanges, exchange liquidity could easily make its way to cbBTC. Muneeb Ali from Stacks and Trust Machines writes more.

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Coinbase announced its Bitcoin intentions days after BitGO, the custodian of WBTC, announced it was entering an agreement with BiT Global. In short, the deal gives Justin Sun and the Tron Ecosystem more control over the WBTC assets.

Layer 1 and Meta Protocols

• Here’s an OP_CAT information dump by Chris Spears. Read more. Bookmark this tweet.

Layers

• Fractal Bitcoin, a new Bitcoin sidechain, launches on public testnet. Here’s a summary by Bob Bodily.

• Stablecoins on Bitcoin are less than 0.1% of the total stablecoin market.

• Forbes publishes a Bitcoin L2 overview post: The Bitcoin Renaissance: Unlocking Trillions In Value.

• There have been 80+ Bitcoin Layer projects announced. 30+ of them are built on the EVM, according to Bitcoin Layers.

• Check out some technical Bitcoin content from Nashville covering SNARKs on Bitcoin, improved bridge designs, MEV, and more.

• Reminder: We need decentralized wrapped BTC assets. BitGo announced that it will transfer control of WBTC to the “world’s first multi-jurisdictional and multi-institutional custody” via a joint venture with BiT Global.

Other

• Marathon Digital (a public Bitcoin miner) is following the Saylor playbook. They issued $250M in debt to buy Bitcoin.

It’s been a volatile week for Bitcoin’s price. But Bitcoin Builders never stop.

This week, Nexio announced a $2.2M pre-seed raise led by Lattice to bring Facebook's Move Virtual Machine (MoveVM) to Bitcoin.

Nexio is a parallelized Bitcoin Rollup. It aims to enable 30k TPS and gas below $0.01.

Using the Movement SDK, “Nexio makes it easy for developers to build on Bitcoin using Aptos Move, Sui Move, and Solidity.”

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At Bitcoin Builders Association, we like to highlight fundraising announcements as it shows that builders will be spending their time improving the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Layer 1 and Meta Protocols

• Bob Bodily summarizes OP_NET — a new Bitcoin-Aligned Smart Contract Meta-Protocol.

Layers

• Speed — a Bitcoin lightning payment platform — introduces USDT-L: a Stablecoin on the Lightning Network.

• Blockspace Media announces OP_NEXT — a technical and workshop-heavy conference exploring Bitcoin's next soft fork.

• A fundraising announcement we missed from mid-July — Bima Labs raises a $2.25 million seed round. Bima is bringing stablecoins to Bitcoin.

• Bitcoin Startup Lab announces the 2024 Bitcoin Olympics Hackathon — a Bitcoin hackathon with a prize pool exceeding $500,000!

Other

• Bitcoin price hit below $50k for the first time in 6 months only to climb back over $60k by the end of the week.