Venture Capital • March 7, 2024, 1:01PM EST
Published 1 minute earlier on

Arthur Hayes backs $3 million pre-seed round for bitcoin trading app Oyl

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The Block

Quick Take

  • Bitcoin trading app Oyl raised $3 million in pre-seed funding led by the venture firm Arca. 
  • BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes and BRC-20 creator Domo also participated in the round. 
  • Oyl is building a Bitcoin-focused trading platform, which includes “in-wallet” trading features for the token and Bitcoin Ordinals. 

The Bitcoin trading app Oyl raised $3 million in pre-seed funding. 

The venture firm Arca led the round. Additional support came from the Arthur Hayes's Maelstrom Fund and Domo, creator of the BRC-20 token standard. BRC-20 is a Bitcoin-specific token standard enabling metadata to be minted on the smallest units of bitcoin, called satoshis. Bitcoin Ordinals are the non-fungible assets minted with associated metadata on the Bitcoin network. 

Oyl is building a trading platform for the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as a market aggregation tool for BRC-20 tokens, in-wallet trading features for Bitcoin and integration with a Bitcoin-focused DeFi platform OmniSat. The platform, called Oyl Wallet, will launch in the coming weeks, according to a company release. 

"Funds that have historically been focused on other chains are now seeing what’s possible on Bitcoin with Ordinals," said Arthur Hayes in a statement. "The infra winners in ‘Bitcoin Defi’ are yet to be determined — it’s a huge opportunity." 

Bitcoin transactions have seen a rise in the past few months thanks in part to Bitcoin Ordinals. In November 2023, Bitcoin transaction costs surpassed that of Ethereum due to increased Bitcoin Ordinals trading volume, The Block previously reported. 


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