Leading Bitcoin wallet company Oyl has secured a $3 million seed investment from a diverse group of investors, including UTXO Management and Domo, creator of the BRC-20 token standard.
The investment represents a notable shift in cryptocurrency investment trends, with several Ethereum NFT funds making their first foray into the Bitcoin-centric business. Arca, which led the round, is a venture firm with a history of investments in Ethereum NFTs and alternative blockchains. Now, the company is expanding its portfolio into the Bitcoin space through Ordinals. Other investors include Foresight Ventures, Taproot Wizards CEO Udi Wertheimer, and premium NFT funds Kanosei and FlamingoDAO.
“The speed of development on Bitcoin is constrained primarily by the lack of infrastructure – we are in a race to see who can create the most usable backend tools for developers to build on top of,” said Domo, creator of BRC-20.
Oyl, based in Brooklyn, New York, is scheduled to launch in the coming weeks, with the goal of becoming the first Bitcoin wallet to include “in-wallet” trading of Bitcoin and Bitcoin. The application is designed to support market aggregation of BRC-20 and facilitate swap integrations with the “bitcoin DeFi” protocol Omnisat.io.
“We want to support the new surge in development on Bitcoin – from generation tools like RPCs, all the way to consumer platforms like Wallet,” Oyl CEO Alec Taggart said in a statement.
Arthur Hayes, whose family office Maelstrom also participated in the financing, noted the growing recognition of untapped potential in the Bitcoin DeFi sector.
“Funds that have historically focused on other chains are now seeing what is possible for Bitcoin with Ordinals,” Arthur Hayes said. “Bitcoin Defi IR winners have yet to be determined – it's a huge opportunity.”
In addition to being about to launch its wallet, Oyl has introduced Sandshrew, a product that provides developer tools such as Bitcoin Core, Esplora, and Ordinals endpoints.
Disclaimer: UTXO Management's parent company, BTC Inc., is also the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine. UTXO management operates separately and independently from Bitcoin Magazine.
