Binance Labs, the venture capital (VC) arm of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has announced an investment in Bitcoin-native restaking protocol BounceBit.
BounceBit merges centralized finance (CeFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi) features in an effort to create more utility for Bitcoin (BTC), wrote Yi He, co-founder of Binance and head of Binance Labs, in an April 11 announcement:
BounceBit is among a new wave of protocols aiming to bring DeFi capabilities to Bitcoin in a new technological paradigm known as Bitcoin DeFi (BTCFi).
BounceBit aims to expand Bitcoin’s use case from being a store of value to a yield-generating asset with more capital efficiency.
The proof-of-stake (PoS) layer-1 ecosystem incentivizes validators to stake both Bitcoin and BounceBit ecosystem tokens as part of its dual-token economy.
The Bitcoin-native restaking infrastructure aims to create more utility for Bitcoin, according to Jack Lu, founder and CEO of Bouncebit:
Binance Labs became an independent venture capital arm after cutting ties with the Binance exchange in March when its portfolio was worth over $10 billion. It covered more than 250 projects from over 25 countries with a return on investment rate of over 14 times.
BounceBit is currently offering its services to more than 110,000 users, with over $782 million in total value locked (TVL), according to its homepage.
Related: With 10 days to the halving, analysts predict $150K Bitcoin top
While Bitcoin-native DeFi was considered impossible a few years ago, BTCFi protocols are gaining traction ahead of the much-anticipated Bitcoin halving, set to take place on April 19.
Showcasing the demand for BTCFi, decentralized exchange (DEX) MerlinSwap raised 6,599 BTC, worth $480 million, during its initial DEX offering (IDO) from over 52,000 investors on April 5.
The record IDO was a testament to the market’s demand for BTCFi which could match Ethereum in DeFi innovation in the future. Nash Lee, co-founder of MerlinSwap, told Cointelegraph: