Dear Current and Prospective Investors,
The events around FTX and Alameda illustrate why we are so passionate about this project.
When users trust custodians with their capital, their wealth becomes fully reliant on whatever risk management practices are in place.
And risk controls in web3 are woefully inadequate.
Terra Luna, 3 Arrows Capital, Celsius and Voyager lost over $72Bn this summer.
This fall, in a few short weeks, FTX and Alameda have lost an additional $45Bn. “Contagion” is spreading to Genesis, Multicoin capital and other stalwarts in the industry.
In aggregate, crypto investors have lost over $2 Trillion over the last twelve months.
There is a better way. Bitcoin is still the largest and safest digital asset. Building on Bitcoin’s inherent decentralization, our platform lets users “self-wrap” (self-custody) their BTC while still enabling it to be used as a productive asset.
We are quite literally building a solution to a Trillion-dollar problem.
With the holidays approaching, we are now finalizing our pre-seed round before Christmas. We are also pitching Tim Draper on January 11.
Following that, we’ll be shifting our focus to our seed round, targeting next year Q3.
Overview
Last month, we completed our MVP. We ran a full, end-to-end DLC flow and moved Bitcoin using conditional logic, fully running on our infrastructure
This month we launched our demo platform on testnet! Our demo shows a generic lending application where users can log in with MetaMask (Ethereum) or Hiro wallet (Stacks) and take a loan in a stablecoin (USDC)
See our demo, showing Bitcoin controlled by MetaMask, here: DLC.Link Lending Demo
In partnership with Arkadiko, we’re on track to launch our first alpha in production on Stacks in December. We will launch a press release in mid-January
Sales and Business Development
We’ve continued building our partnerships with chains (Avalanche, Optimism, Cosmos, Polygon, Algorand, Solana) as well as with large web3 entities (Chainlink, Trust Machines, Jane Street crypto)
We’ve issued a proposal to Trust Machines for a consulting project around their upcoming sBTC token.
By implementing DLCs into Hiro wallet, Stacks users would be able to utilize sBTC and apps directly from within their wallet
We have an exciting new opportunity to partner with Chainlink’s Proof of Reserve team. Chainlink is implementing Proof of Reserves into AAVE and Compound.
We could further enhance their product by using a DLC escrow to actually lock the BTC reserve, making it fully controllable by Chainlink PoR oracles
We are in active conversation with two VPs at Foundry Digital, the largest mining pool in North America.
They are interested in exploring DLCs for non-custodial lending as well as to create a Bitcoin hashrate product targeted to miners.
In addition, we’re in active conversations with prospects across multiple chains.
Prospective customers include lenders (e.g. Sonne on Optimism, BenQi on Avalanche, Mars Protocol on Cosmos), custodians (NYDIG, Anchorage, Propine), insurance providers (Nimble Insurance, Bitcoin Mutual, Standard Re), exchanges (Velodrome) and wrapped asset providers (Algomint)
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.
"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
“The DeFi that we invest in is a DeFi-based financial system running on non-custodial, open, permissionless, fully transparent financial rails” – Michael Jordan and Alex Pack, investors, said on a recent Unchained podcast
"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 basically enabling a credit market on Bitcoin" – Felix Schmidt, former Chief Investment Officer at Sirius Group
“One of the most innovative projects we have seen recently" – VC Analyst at Jane Street Crypto
"You're sovereign Bitcoin for everything else” – Kingsway Capital
"I think this is awesome. This is exactly what people should be doing" – Udi Wertheimer, Bitcoin influencer
Marketing and PR
After attending two Bitcoin conferences and speaking to both “Bitcoin maxis” and developers, I’ve come to understand the natural friction between “Bitcoin-only” and “Bitcoin-first” companies.
To help represent the latter, I’ve coined a new term: Bitcoin+. In short, Bitcoin+ people believe that Bitcoin should be used in Ethereum and elsewhere.
Read the full post here: https://www.dlc.link/blog/introducing-the-bitcoin-plus-mentality
We published an article detailing the security benefits of DLCs vs bridging or wrapping: https://media.dlcbtc.com/p/the-security-benefts-of-dlcs-vs-bridging-or-wrapping?utm_source=media.dlcbtc.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=the-security-benefits-of-dlcs-vs-bridging-or-wrapping
My mentor Dug Song (founder of Duo Security, acquired by Cisco for over $2Bn) is now connecting us to Trail of Bits and Verichains to pressure-test our approach.
Read the article here: https://www.dlc.link/blog/the-security-benefits-of-dlcs-vs-bridging-or-wrapping
We’re publishing our eBook this week! “How dlcBTC Enables Bitcoin On Ethereum Without Wrapping”. Look for it on our website and in our marketing material soon
We’re also publishing our whitepaper, which should be ready next January.
Our whitepaper will build on the original DLC whitepaper from 4 years ago but details our entire platform.
We are soon publishing a blog post detailing all of the components of our platform, so stay tuned for that!
See our up-to-date media list here: https://www.dlcbtc.com/media
We invite all investors to join our Telegram community at English: https://t.me/dlcbtc
For native Mandarin speakers, you can join our Chinese community at https://t.me/dlcbtc_cn
Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/dlcBTC
Product
Our first wallet is live! We now have the first independent DLC signing module that can be integrated into any Bitcoin wallet.
We are now working on embedding this technology into production-level wallets such as XVerse and Hiro
This month, we completed our demo platform on testnet! Our demo is a generic lending application where users can log in with MetaMask or Hiro wallet (Stacks) and take a loan in a stablecoin.
The user supplies Bitcoin using our generic wallet and can take USDC in MetaMask
We are working on designing a dlcBTC “proof of collateral” token that lenders and other applications can use to track how much BTC has been placed in escrow.
We are working with several engineers who have designed tokens at other lending projects
Team
Welcome Jesse Tevelow (JT), our new PR/Branding guru! To provide some background: JT participated in the first-ever TechStars cohort with Brad Feld in Colorado in 2010.
He then co-founded PlayQ, a gaming company that grew to $40Mn ARR and was voted “Best place to Work in LA”.
He left PlayQ and wrote several bestselling books on entrepreneurship. He then joined me in 2015 and helped get MarketMuse, my first startup, off the ground.
He then moved to crypto and promoted ICOs and crypto projects with PR, branding and live events.
I’m thrilled to work with him again, as he brings deep entrepreneurial experience coupled with an eye toward branding, messaging and storytelling
We held our first companywide strategic planning offsite in early October in Budapest. It was great to have the team together! See a photo of us here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkOlJm1OjSa
Finance and Fundraising
We’re now closing our Q4 Pre-seed round by next Fri (Dec 9). We set out to raise $250k to close out a $1Mn pre-seed, but are likely going to oversubscribe.
We’re now participating in the second cohort of the DraperX Bitcoin Studio. DraperX is an 8-week program, culminating in a pitch to Tim Draper.
As required by the program, we’ve set aside an additional $250k allocation for Tim Draper and his affiliates
Starting Dec 12, will we be pausing fundraising so as to focus on hitting our next milestones.
We will be raising a seed round next Q3, which will also provide an opportunity for funds to deploy larger ($500k+) checks then
How You Can Help
We always appreciate introductions to investment funds, blockchains and prospective customers. When making an intro, you can simply sent them to:
Video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9RDzi2WZYc&feature=youtu.be
Best,
Aki
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