According to a report from CoinWorld, Bitcoin infrastructure startup Bitlayer announced on Wednesday that it has raised $5 million through a three-round oversubscribed token financing. According to a statement, Bitlayer raised funds from thousands of investors on crowdfunding platforms such as CoinList and Echo. The team wrote in the statement: "Strong demand led to CoinList selling out completely in a limited time, attracting over 6,300 verified investors and exceeding 50% of the subscription target." Notably, the sale of the native BTR token on CoinList received over $4.00 million in commitments, while the community issuance on Holdstation ended in 28 seconds. Bitlayer refers to itself as "the first U.S.-accessible Bitcoin project token issuance," reminiscent of the era of initial coin offerings (ICOs). Bitlayer Labs was founded in October 2023 and is building a Bitcoin Layer 2 network based on the Bitcoin Virtual Machine (BitVM) system, which aims to expand the programmability of applications while leveraging the security of Bitcoin. Bitlayer launched its mainnet V1 in early 2024 and introduced its "trust-minimized" BitVM Bridge in July of this year. This new funding will be used to expand Bitlayer's operational scale, team development, and ecosystem building. Co-founder Charlie Hu stated that the project has already released integrations with blockchains such as Arbitrum, Base, Cardano, and Sui. The team hopes to release its mainnet V2 later this year. Bitlayer previously completed a $5 million seed round financing in March 2024, followed by a $20 million Series A financing led by Framework Ventures and ABCDE Capital. The latest round of financing brings its total funding in private and public offerings to $29.91 million.
