Dear Current and Prospective Investors,
Last year’s collapses of 3AC, Terra/LUNA and FTX created a hole that spread to Nexo, BlockFi, Genesis and others.
The system should be rebuilt using Bitcoin’s strengths as a decentralized, transparent, permissionless reserve asset.
Currently, building on Bitcoin requires custodians to be used, whereas Bitcoin locked in DLCs is secured by the entire Bitcoin chain.
Having built a previous business – one with patented IP, a great company culture and a well-oiled sales & marketing machine – I can tell you from personal experience that dlcBTC is moving twice as fast and will result in a 10X larger company. I’m excited to have you along for the ride.
We’ve built out our prototypes and are now launching our first integrations. And not only are we announcing one launch, but three!
We’re launching integrations with a wallet (Xverse), a lending platform (Arkadiko) as well as an NFT platform codenamed Project Orange that lets users mint Bitcoin-backed NFTs.
Also, on Febuary 16th we’re presenting DLC.link at DraperX Bitcoin Studio’s Demo Day, where Tim Draper and over 70 Bitcoin-positive investors will see our pitch.
We anticipate that the investors in that round will complete our pre-seed fundraise. But in the meantime, we’re still raising on $25k-250k checks.
If we haven’t spoken in a while, message me and let’s discuss!
Overview
Xverse, a Bitcoin/Stacks multichain wallet, will be launching their DLC.link integration that lets XVerse wallets create Bitcoin escrows. This is tentatively scheduled for late Feb
Arkadiko, a lender on Stacks, will be launching their integration shortly after.
Tentative timeframe could be as early as March. Philip, CEO of Arkadiko said: “Our partnership with dlcBTC allows us to use native Bitcoin in our lending solution.
Arkadiko is the first lending/borrowing platform at scale to offer a native Bitcoin integration”
Project Orange is the codename for our first EVM application: a demo app that lets Bitcoin be locked to mint a Bitcoin-backed “Proof of Collateral” NFT, which can be lent against.
We’re exploring various partners for this, with Arcade.xyz, Bridgesplit, Sodium.fi and others
We’re forming a strategic partnership with Chainlink.
In return for a revenue share, we’ll be getting their help on events, hackathons, co-marketing, introductions and solution architecture from their internal teams (Proof of Reserve, Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, etc.)
Sales and Business Development
We’re in active conversations with pilots across multiple use cases.
Prospective customers include lenders (BenQi, Sonne), custodians (Propine, NYDIG, Anchorage, Brane), insurance providers (Nimble Insurance, Standard Re) and wrapped asset providers (Algomint)
Foundry Digital (largest mining pool in North America) are considering offering lending services for their miners, built right into their UI.
Integrating dlcBTC would let them offer these services in a non-custodial fashion. They’ve even recently organized an internal hackathon on DLCs!
We’re excited about this partnership as they are intimately familiar with pain points faced by institutional miners
We are deepening our relationship with Propine, a leading custodian based in Singapore. They are interested in looping us into several pilots starting as early as Q2.
They’re also interested in bringing in partners so as to develop more sophisticated joint offerings as well
We are prototyping with Chainlink’s Proof of Reserve team. Chainlink is implementing Proof of Reserves into AAVE and Compound.
We aim to further enhance their offering by using a DLC escrow to actually lock the BTC reserve, making it fully lockable by Chainlink PoR oracles
Recent Quotes
A few recent quotes from our fans. These comments have not been cleared for use in marketing, so please don’t share or post them publicly.
“I think what you’re doing is super interesting. You’re taking risk out of lending and bringing in governance. I think it’s long overdue. I think this will be super-essential for custodians to get involved with” — Tuhina, CEO of Propine
“You’re enabling a money market on Bitcoin” – Ryan Terribilini, Algorand Ventures
"The longevity of this solution is outstanding. This lets Bitcoin be used in so many ways. I think this is revolutionary." – An Executive at Chainlink
"Taking Bitcoin, which is decentralized, and giving it to centralized custodians to use in decentralized finance -- is stupid in so many ways" – Alex Baghdjian, Funday
“You’re making Bitcoin more composable & usable in DeFi. DLCs make it more transparent and secure so that AAVE/Compound uses it as a circuit breaker” – Michael Imperiale, Chainlink Proof of Reserve
"You're sovereign Bitcoin for everything else” – Kingsway Capital
Marketing and PR
We’ve published an eBook on “How to Enable Bitcoin on Ethereum Without Wrapping”. Grab your copy here: https://go.dlc.link/how-to-enable-bitcoin-on-ethereum-without-wrapping
We’ve also published content detailing the components of our platform (https://www.dlc.link/blog/components-of-dlc-link) as well as an article on the security benefits of DLCs vs. other forms of wrapped Bitcoin (https://www.dlc.link/blog/the-security-benefits-of-dlcs-vs-bridging-or-wrapping).
Aki was recently interviewed by The Illuminati on “The State and Future of Bitcoin Utility in DeFi”. Over 250 people attended. Read the transcript and listen to the recording here: https://twitter.com/0x_illuminati/status/1620195175325917185
Aki also gave an interview on the Management Blueprint Podcast, which you can view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6rWz5uvn8k
Product
Until our products launch, you can watch our demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGnVzd2y7W8.
This shows a generic application where users can log in with MetaMask and take a loan on their Bitcoin
This week, we’re completing our ERC-721 “Non-Fungible Escrow” (NFE) token that connects to a locked escrow. This forms the basis for our NFT lending integrations that we’re working on soon
We’re also designing a dlcBTC “Proof of Collateral” deposit token that lenders and other applications can use to track how much BTC has been placed in escrow.
Base ERC-20 by itself does not support the necessary metadata we need, but we’re exploring semi-fungible tokens, soulbound tokens and a potential collaboration with KycDAO for “Verified Bitcoin tokens”
Team
Elvie Kamalova joined us as our Business Development Advisor! Elvie formerly served as Head of Ecosystems and Investments at Chainlink.
Prior to that, she was a VC at several funds.
Read the press release here: https://www.dlc.link/blog/elvie-kamalova-joins-dlc-link-as-strategic-advisor
Finance and Fundraising
On Jan 31, we’ve just held our first investor call for existing investors. Intended as a mini-Board Meeting, we walked through an overview of our traction and discussed putting together an SPV intended to bring in more strategic participation
We’re finishing our participation in DraperX Bitcoin Studio and will be presenting to Tim Draper and over 40 investors on Feb 16.
As requested by the program, we’ve set aside an $250k allocation for Tim Draper himself. We’ll also be raising up to $500k in an SPV
We’re seeing broad interest in the market. However, at the moment we’re focusing on pre-seed funds that invest $25k-250k checks.
For funds seeking to deploy $1Mn or more, please keep in touch and we’re looking forward to further conversations in our seed round starting later this year
How You Can Help
Please refer us broadly! We’d love to meet pre-seed funds and angels who are interested in writing $25k-$250k checks.
In addition, we’d love to meet app developers interested in building native Bitcoin support into their EVM applications.
Finally, we’d love to talk to institutions with large amounts of Bitcoin, including Bitcoin miners and mining pools, custodians, credit trading desks and hedge funds.
Best,
Aki
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