Dear Investors,
As we enter our seed round fundraise, I'll keep this update concise. Our core thesis positions us to become a Top 10 token in crypto.
The Problem with wBTC
wBTC was revolutionary four years ago, enabling Bitcoin's use in DeFi on Ethereum.
However, it relies on a single centralized custodian, BitGo, introducing counterparty risk and regulatory risk (as a US Trust company).
Furthermore, minting and burning wBTC is a manual process taking 3-12 hours, making it cumbersome for traders and leading to potentially major losses during market volatility.
The Need for a Better Solution
Bitcoin needs a non-custodial, automated, and fast solution that scales to Bitcoin's $1 trillion level.
Recent discussions with Franklin Templeton and Matrixport highlighted two key requirements for corporate treasuries:
Self-Custody: Treasuries must maintain control of their Bitcoin without using bridges or Layer 2 technologies. Not your keys, not your Bitcoin.
Daily Redemptions: The protocol must support daily redemptions without time locks, unlike Babylon's solution (which relies on HTLCs).
iBTC meets these needs, offering security and liquidity, making it an ideal solution for corporate treasuries. If you work with any, put us in touch!
Overview
We’ve signed an agreement with Ripple to launch on XRPL, Ripple’s new DeFi chain. As the first wrapped Bitcoin on XRPL, iBTC will be listed on their AMM and as collateral in their lending pool. We’ve also received a grant to incentivize liquidity. Ripple is an institutional leader with global reach, so we’re excited about the volume this will drive and the co-marketing it enables.
We’ve received our AAVE risk collateral report. Llamarisk and Wintermute acknowledged that it’s an interesting protocol, but as a next step, need to see us grow TVL past $5Mn and implement a bug bounty program before we reapply. Read details here:
We’re excited to welcome our new Growth Lead, Kadeem Clarke, to the iBTC team! Kadeem previously co-founded M6 Labs, the marketing arm of Momentum 6, a crypto VC fund. At M6 Labs, Kadeem built a community of over 30k, led a team of 9 people and boosted distribution by over 250k people. As one of the first people to write a research article on us, Kadeem has been a friend and supporter since Aug 2022. It’s a pleasure and honor to have him onboard.
Sales and Business Development
We’re expanding our merchant program. In addition to Amber Group, we’re now onboarding IMC (#28 BTC holder in the world, with over 65,000 BTC), Cumberland, Hashkey OTC, Time Research, Psalion and Nascent.
In Q2, our 4-person BD team worked on 183 partnerships, including liquidity providers (supply) and Defi protocols (demand). In total, we are tracking 339 DeFi protocols. Generally sources of yield with iBTC include lend/borrow, staking, stablecoins and DeFi options.
We’re currently tracking 45 chains, with plans to launch on approximately 10 this year. Currently, our priority chains are: Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, OP, Polygon, Solana, Eclipse, XRPL, BNB/BSC and Injective. Other chains in consideration include Tron (#2 largest), Filecoin, Sui, StarkNet and more.
We’ve in conversations for listing $iBTC and $DLC with leading centralized exchanges, including OKX, Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and Bybit.
Symbiotic has agreed to list iBTC as collateral! This will enable an ecosystem of LRTs (including Swell and others) to create restaking pools backed by iBTC. This is a big unlock – we’ll keep you posted.
Our Curve pool received a gauge! It was great to receive 100% support, with 327Mn veCRV votes for YEA and zero NAY votes. Read more: https://gov.curve.fi/t/proposal-to-add-iBTC-wbtc-to-the-gauge-controller/10162
Marketing and PR
We’ve begun a gradual re-branding from DLC.Link to iBTC. We are putting together a re-branding plan. Expect our website domain and Twitter handle to change as well.
We are the first protocol in the world to enable native Bitcoin staking! We’ve launched to mainnet months before Babylon’s expected launch. Read more here: https://www.dlc.link/case-studies/dlc-link-nektar-and-enzyme-partner-to-launch-native-btc-staking-on-ethereum-mainnet
We have a collection of articles and case studies on our blog. Please visit: https://www.dlc.link/media
Join our Telegram community at https://t.me/dlclink or https://t.me/dlclink_cn (Mandarin) and follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/dlc_link
Testimonials
A few recent quotes from our fans:
“You’re a better, faster, cheaper version of wBTC.” – Head of Trading at a leading prime brokerage
“We don’t like trading wBTC, because of the logistics. You've solved that.” – Top 5 market maker
"We see iBTC as a foundational building block in DeFi, with the potential to become a multi-billion-dollar business." — Nicole Liu, Comma 3 Ventures
"iBTC is making Bitcoin more composable & usable in DeFi" – Oliver Birch, Global Head, Chainlink BUILD Program.
"You're sovereign Bitcoin for everything else.” – Leading Bitcoin Investment Fund
Product
As we expand our DLC Attestor network from 7 to 15, we’re excited to soon welcome EverStake, P2P and Validation Cloud. We have more inbound interest in running attestors than slots that we can fill, so we’re selecting node operators strategically.
We are soon launching our points dashboard. Users (retail or institutional) can earn 1X points for holding iBTC and 5X points for using it as collateral. The 1X point reward applies for both merchants (who mint it) and retail (who swap for it on exchanges).
We’re making good progress on our $DLC tokenomics development. We’re targeting Nov 2024 for the TGE of $DLC. The core purpose of $DLC will be to help decentralize our DLC Attestation network and to be used for DeFi rewards.
Finance and Fundraising
We are actively preparing to raise a seed round of $5 million USD, with the potential to oversubscribe.
To date, we've received verbal interest from: Round 13 ($750k), Good News Ventures ($500k), Vitalbridge ($500k), Monday Capital, Ethan Buchman (Tendermint/Cosmos), Paul Taylor (BlackRock), and Mayur Gupta (CMO of Kraken).
Since I live in New York, my focus is on identifying a US-based co-lead to start.
How You Can Help
We are actively looking to form partnerships with a wide variety of financial institutions, including hedge funds, OTC trading desks and prime brokerages that hold or trade Bitcoin.
If you are in contact with any institutions that hold or trade BTC or wBTC, please introduce me directly.
We’d also love to meet DeFi protocols involved in staking, lend/borrow or yield generation.
Best,
Aki
PS – Missed any of our previous Investor Updates? Read past editions here:
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