Okcoin Announces $165M "Bitcoin Odyssey" Collective, Partners with Top Venture Firms to Supercharge Bitcoin Adoption

SAN FRANCISCO, March 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Okcoin, one of the world's largest and fastest-growing cryptocurrency platforms, along with the Stacks Accelerator and Stacks Foundation, today announced the launch of the Bitcoin Odyssey, a year-long pledge among venture firms to deploy $165 million collectively into solutions for accelerating bitcoin adoption. The participating firms—which include Digital Currency Group, GSR, and White Star Capital, among others—will allocate capital and resources to projects being built on Stacks, an open-source network for Bitcoin-based smart contracts, as well as the Bitcoin blockchain itself.

The Bitcoin Odyssey, co-chaired by Okcoin Head of Listings Alex Chizhik and Stacks Accelerator Partner Kyle Ellicott, is a response to both an influx of investor interest in decentralized finance (DeFi) and new technological capabilities made possible by Stacks, which has seen a peak market capitalization of $3.7 billion since the network's mainnet launch in January 2021. As a Layer-1 network, Stacks runs in parallel with the Bitcoin blockchain and enables the use of BTC in decentralized lending, NFT purchasing, and other smart contract applications that were previously only compatible with ether and other alternative cryptocurrencies, known as altcoins.

"The Bitcoin Odyssey is recalibrating capital and resources back to the foundation of cryptocurrency, and that starts with Bitcoin and Stacks," said Alex Chizhik, Head of Listings at Okcoin and Co-Chair of Bitcoin Odyssey. "While the rise of NFTs and altcoins dominated public attention in 2021, there is still a lot of work to be done for digital assets to be adopted globally in meaningful ways. As the only currency that is truly decentralized, we believe bitcoin should remain at the epicenter of crypto adoption."

Dubbing 2022 the "Year of Bitcoin," partners of the Bitcoin Odyssey are committed to expanding and improving everyday use of bitcoin as the internet's native currency. The collective brings together the top names in crypto venture capital: A41 Ventures, Alumni Venture Group (AVG), Blockdream, Cosimo Ventures, DeSpread, Digital Currency Group, Edimus Capital, GBV Capital, Gossamer Capital, GSR, Nesho Enterprises, NOIA Capital, Stardust Ventures, Stacks Accelerator, Stacks Foundation, Unmutable Ventures, Westridge Markets, White Star Capital.

"Last year, we witnessed a record-setting amount of venture capital invested throughout web3, and now we're watching that narrative transition towards including the beginnings of DeFi on Bitcoin. Thus far, we have seen self-repaying loans, borrowing and lending, yield-generating NFTs, and new protocols including the maturing CityCoins protocol, all on Bitcoin," said Kyle Ellicott, Partner at the Stacks Accelerator and Co-Chair of Bitcoin Odyssey. "Bitcoin Odyssey is going to empower the next wave of founders and projects building decentralized applications on Bitcoin with the needed growth capital and increased liquidity required to on-ramp the next billion consumers to the new digital-first world."

The Bitcoin Odyssey will consider Bitcoin and Stacks-focused projects with solutions across Web3, including: the metaverse; play-to-earn (blockchain-based gaming); DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs; CityCoins and GovTech; and other areas. The selected Odyssey projects will receive hands-on assistance from industry-leading organizations in addition to funding. Key areas of support will include project scaling, legal, smart contract development and audits, recruiting, market making, and more.

To learn more about the Bitcoin Odyssey, please visit okcoin.com/bitcoinodyssey.

About Okcoin
Founded in 2013, Okcoin is a US-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange serving over 190+ countries and territories. The platform enables retail and institutional investors to purchase 50+ digital assets using local currencies, with a mission to make crypto easy for everyone including first-time buyers. Okcoin was the first centralized exchange to offer direct entry into decentralized finance (DeFi) with Earn, a tool for earning APY through decentralized lending, liquidity pools, staking, and more. In addition, Okcoin offers institutional trading tools and APIs to asset managers, venture capital and hedge funds, retail brokers, payment processors, and more. Follow Okcoin on Twitter at @Okcoin and visit okcoin.com for more information.

About Stacks
Stacks provides secure smart contracts and apps for Bitcoin. The Stacks ecosystem is a collection of independent entities, developers, and community members working to build a user-owned internet on Bitcoin. The Stacks blockchain extends the design of Bitcoin to enable secure apps and predictable Clarity smart contracts without modifying Bitcoin itself, opening innovation on the network for the first time. The Stacks cryptocurrency (STX) is used as fuel for networking activity and contract execution and can be locked by STX holders via 'Stacking' to earn Bitcoin (BTC) rewards for supporting blockchain consensus. Stacks cryptocurrency was offered to the general public through the first-ever SEC qualified token offering in US history.

Media Contact: 
Larissa Bundziak
Communications Manager, Okcoin
[email protected] 

SOURCE Okcoin