Pioneering Bitcoin wallet company Oyl has secured $3 million in pre-seed investment from a variety of investors, including UTXO Management and Domo, the creator of the BRC-20 token standard.
This investment marks a notable shift in cryptocurrency investment trends as several Ethereum NFT funds enter the Bitcoin-focused business for the first time. Arca, which led this round, is a venture company with a history of investing in Ethereum NFTs and alternative blockchains. Now, the company is expanding its portfolio into the Bitcoin space with Ordinals. Other investors include Foresight Ventures, Taproot Wizards CEO Udi Wertheimer, prominent NFT funds Kanosei, and FlamingoDAO.
“Bitcoin’s development speed is limited primarily by a lack of infrastructure. We are competing to see who can create the most useful backend tools for developers to build,” said Domo, founder of BRC-20.
Oyl, based in Brooklyn, New York, is set to launch in the coming weeks with the goal of becoming the first Bitcoin wallet to integrate “in-wallet” transactions of Bitcoin and Ordinals. The app is designed to support market aggregation for BRC-20 and facilitate swap integration with the “Bitcoin DeFi” protocol Omnisat.io.
“We want to support the surge of new developments in Bitcoin, from builder tools like RPC to consumer platforms like Wallet,” Oyl CEO Alec Taggart said in a statement.
Arthur Hayes, whose family office Maelstrom also participated in the funding, noted the growing awareness of the untapped potential within the Bitcoin DeFi sector.
“Funds that have historically focused on other chains are now looking to Ordinals to see what is possible in Bitcoin,” said Arthur Hayes. “The infrastructure winner for ‘Bitcoin Defi’ is yet to be determined. “This is a huge opportunity.”
In addition to the upcoming wallet launch, Oyl has launched Sandshrew, a product that provides developer tools such as Bitcoin Core, Esplora, and Ordinals endpoints.
Disclaimer: BTC Inc., the parent company of UTXO Management, is also the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine. UTXO management operates independently and separately from Bitcoin Magazine.