Ten31 Timestamp 790,900
The Ten31 team spent the week in Miami at the Bitcoin 2023 Conference, where many portfolio companies hosted events and made announcements. Among the highest profile updates were Strike’s rollout of its global money app, which will expand Strike’s availability to more than 3 billion people, and Mempool.space’s new transaction accelerator service, which will offer individuals and enterprises a streamlined way to push lower-fee transactions awaiting confirmation forward in mempool queues.
The Open Source Stage was once again a main highlight of the conference. This track of talks and firesides — spearheaded by Ten31 partner Matt Odell — covered diverse technical topics like Miniscript, new lightning applications, the growth of Nostr, and much more. The energy and new ideas on display at the Open Source Stage reaffirmed that the pace of innovation on bitcoin is accelerating, even amidst a bear market and choppy price action. We came away from the week energized by the level of ongoing development in bitcoin and the path forward for the emerging bitcoin infrastructure ecosystem.
Portfolio Company Spotlight
Debifi, the winner of Pitch Day in the infrastructure category at this year’s Bitcoin Conference, is a non-custodial lending platform to provide institutional-grade liquidity for P2P loans collateralized by bitcoin. The company, founded by Hodl Hodl CEO Max Keidun, offers robust, secure multisig vaults that ensure bitcoin collateral cannot be rehypothecated, solving one of the key problems plaguing most “DeFi” projects. Debifi extends the proven security of Hodl Hodl’s lending model to the institutional sphere and will begin its full launch later this year.
Selected Portfolio News
Strike announced the rollout of its global money app. The redesigned app allows users around the world to instantly send and receive bitcoin and dollar balances, make lightning payments, send instant and cheap remittances, and more. The app is now available to 3 billion users in over 65 countries.
Mempool.space announced its new Mempool Accelerator service, which will offer users the ability to accelerate confirmation of low-fee transactions stuck in mempools:
Fold announced its expansion into El Salvador:
Fedi released the alpha version of its app for testing and development.
IBEX announced a partnership with large Mexican conglomerate Grupo Salinas to integrate lightning payments:
River Financial announced its $35 million Series B funding round:
Start9 announced its new Community Tech Program, which will allow qualified freelancers to provide customer support for Start9 users:
Media
Many Ten31 portfolio companies led panels and keynote speeches at Bitcoin Miami, including Wiz of Mempool.Space, Jack Mallers from Strike, Obi Nwosu from Fedi, NVK from Coinkite, and more.
Marty Bent joined Mackenzie Sigalos on CNBC to discuss mining and the regulatory backdrop for bitcoin.
Market Updates
The debt ceiling conflict dragged on with no resolution last week, as the US treasury cash balance declined precipitously.
Emergency Fed lending was up again W/W to $96 billion.
Fed Chairman Powell made comments suggesting that ongoing stress in the banking system could influence the Fed’s rate path.
Rising rates and weakening macro indicators continue to create stress in commercial real estate, as a variety of high profile properties are being sold at steep discounts.
Residential real estate also continues to struggle, with previously owned home prices posting their largest monthly decline in over 11 years.
The macro backdrop for China — where market analysts had until recently been looking for a “reopening recovery” — also deteriorated across a variety of metrics for the month of April.
Prominent stablecoin issuer Tether announced it would begin allocating up to 15% of operating profit to purchasing bitcoin, adding to the $1.5 billion BTC balance the organization already holds.
Regulatory Update
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced a fairly detailed pro-bitcoin platform in a speech at the Bitcoin Conference.
The DOJ’s Head of Crypto suggested the agency would increase focus on exchanges, as well as mixers and tumblers that obscure transaction histories.
Noteworthy
Users reported fake Trezor hardware wallets sold through third parties that have been modified to steal funds. This episode highlights the importance of buying devices directly from the manufacturer, as well as the benefits that secure elements can provide.
The Wall Street Journal highlighted the fate of depositors in Silicon Valley Bank’s Cayman Islands branch, who were excluded from the First Citizens Bank acquisition and remain under FDIC receivership.
Travel
Nashville Ten31 Tribe event, June 14
Nashville Lightning Summit, July 13-14