BitDAO launches after $230M funding round led by Peter Thiel

The DAO is launching after completing a $230 million funding round led by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

BitDAO launches after $230M funding round led by Peter Thiel

BitDAO announced its DAO launch on Tuesday in conjunction with completing a private sale from initial partners led by Peter Thiel, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Founders Fund.  

Other investors included billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, liquidity platform Spartan Group, Jump Capital, Fenbushi, and Kain Warwick of DeFi protocol Synthetix, among a total of more than 20 players in the decentralized finance industry.

Bybit, one of the leading cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, is a major initial proponent of BitDAO, pledging recurring contributions to the new DAO at launch. 

The company specifically pledged a contribution of 2.5 basis points of its futures contracts’ trading volume to the BitDAO treasury, which is expected to generate over $1 billion per year based on this year's run rates, the DAO said.

The recurring contributions-powered treasury of the DAO will be used to provide liquidity as well as to drive new protocols such as decentralized exchanges, lending, and synthetics protocols. 

BitDAO also plans to support blockchain projects through grants, and aid existing and emerging projects through token swaps, according to the announcement.

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The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has seen a remarkable decline in recent months due to a major sell-off on the cryptocurrency markets. 

The DeFi market topped in mid-May at a total value locked (TVL) of around $158 billion. At the time of writing, DeFi TVL amounts to $126 billion, according to DeFi aggregator DefiLlama.