Bima Labs, the developer of the Bitcoin BTC +5.68% -backed stablecoin USBD, has emerged from stealth, raising $2.25 million in a seed funding round.

Portal Ventures led the round, with Draper Goren Blockchain, Sats Ventures, Luxor Technology, CoreDAO, and Dan Tapiero's Halo Capital participating, Bima Labs said Monday. Angel investors, including Ryan Fang of Ankr, Brian Crain of Chorus One, Jeffrey Feng of Sei Labs and Smokey of Berachain, also joined the round.

Bima was founded in April, began raising funds then, and closed the round within three months, founder and CEO Siddarth Sridhar told The Block. Sridhar said the round was structured as equity with token warrants. He declined to comment on the valuation.

Bima has developed USBD, a Bitcoin-backed stablecoin, which can be minted by providing Bitcoin liquid staking and restaking tokens as collateral. Bima said it will accept collateral from several blockchains, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin scaling networks, Ethereum ETH +6.18% Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible networks and Solana.

"Users can deposit their Bitcoin liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) from a wide variety of providers to mint USBD from Lorenzo, Lombard, pStake, Bedrock, Acre, DLC.link, ALEX Labs BTC, and more," Sridhar said.

The minted USBD stablecoin can be used for lending, borrowing, swapping and other purposes in decentralized finance applications to earn more rewards.

"We envision a world of new credit, debt and hybrid use cases powered by USBD, whether you're in China, the U.S., Brazil or Europe," Sridhar said.

USBD is currently live on a testnet. Sridhar said the mainnet launch will occur in the fourth quarter of this year. Bima will also launch its own governance token, BIMA, around the same time, Sridhar added. The BIMA token will be issued on an EVM-compatible chain that has yet to be decided, Sridhar said.

Bima joins over a dozen projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem that have raised venture capital funding this year, as The Block reported recently. Sridhar said Bima was initially developing a stablecoin in the Ethereum ecosystem based on EigenLayer's restaking protocol but decided to pivot to Bitcoin.

"Whatever was accomplished on Ethereum within 4-5 years is being done on Bitcoin within a span of 4-5 months," Sridhar said. The Bitcoin ecosystem has a higher total addressable market, more asset utilization in places like Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa, and ultimately more potential to unlock higher yield opportunities."

With fresh funding, Bima plans to grow its six-person team by hiring across functions, including business development and engineering, Sridhar said.

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