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Bitcoin Excitement Peaks as Builders Gather in London For Bitcoin Unleashed

Published by Shannon Voight on September 27, 2023

The excitement around building on Bitcoin has never been this high, as Bitcoin enthusiasts and industry leaders are gearing up for the highly anticipated Bitcoin Unleashed event in London.

  • Users choose Bitcoin as Ordinal inscriptions reach 32 Million
    With total Ordinal sales crossing $500 Million and cumulative inscription fees reaching the $50 Million milestone, it becomes clear that the market is moving towards leveraging Bitcoin as a store of value.
  • Developers choose to build on Bitcoin
    Bitcoin Startup Lab saw over 400 registrants for the Bitcoin accelerator, Bitcoin Frontier Fund is hosting the world's first Ordinals accelerator, and hundreds of developers signed up for the EasyA Bitcoin Builders hackathon in London.
  • Investors choose Bitcoin startups
    Recently, Stroom Network's Bitcoin staking raised $3.5M, Bitcoin Wallet Xverse raised $5M during the seed round, and Bitcoin DeFi protocol ALEX raises $2.5 million to bring decentralized finance to Bitcoin.

But why is there so much interest in building on Bitcoin? What are the results of this Bitcoin builders culture revival? In this post, we're exploring pioneers in the Bitcoin builders space that will gather in London with one single goal:

Unlocking the Bitcoin economy

Building on the L1: A first
Ordinal Inscriptions, BRC-20 tokens and other new Bitcoin use cases have enabled builders to build on the Bitcoin L1. Here's exciting news from Bitcoin L1 builders speaking at Bitcoin Unleashed London:
  • Mark Hendrickson
    General Manager of Leather
    Bitcoin Wallet Leather bridged the gap between Bitcoin and Bitcoin layers, making it possible to move between Bitcoin and Stacks and deploy Bitcoin-backed assets in smart contracts. This, while integrating the many emerging use cases on the L1, with BRC-20, Ordinals, and Stamps to name a few.
  • Bruffstar
    Co-founder Ordinals Bot
    Ordinals Bot is the first ever inscription tool for people to inscribe their art on Bitcoin. Recently, Ordinals Bot introduced the option to inscribe onto specific sats, such as Black Sats (last sat of each block) and Pizza sats (10K BTC pizza transaction). Ordinals bot is pioneering the art space on Bitcoin.
  • Andrea Zaragoza
    Partner Bitcoin Frontier Fund
    Bitcoin Frontier Fund, a startup accelerator for Bitcoin builders, just announced a $100K investment for the first Rune indexer. This, together with their next Ordinals and Bitcoin L2 accelerator kicking off soon.
Building on Bitcoin L2s
Where excitement around building on the L1 increases, other builders are trying to scale the Bitcoin economy with Bitcoin layers. The following L2 builders speaking at Bitcoin Unleashed share their achievements:
  • Vitalis Salis
    Lead Engineer Babylon
    Babylon's Bitcoin data availability protocol, utilizes Bitcoin's limited blockspace exclusively for critical tasks, such as providing a censorship resistance layer. Babylon recently announced its Bitcoin Staking protocol, allowing Bitcoin holders to stake, without relying on a centralized lender.
  • Daniel Fogg
    CEO at IOV Labs
    IOV Labs (Rootstock & Riff) is building a layer 2 solution for Bitcoin, making it possible to leave Bitcoin unchanged, while also allowing full smart contracts on Bitcoin. Rootstock has 3400 BTC locked in the 2-Way Peg (and secured by proof-of-work), and an additional $200M of non-Bitcoin native tokens active on the network.
  • Andre Serrano
    sBTC Product Lead
    sBTC will allow you to move your Bitcoin from the L1 to a Bitcoin layer in a decentralized and trust minimized way. On the L2, you can use your BTC in Decentralized Applications, built with smart contracts that are secured by 100% of Bitcoin's security budget. The sBTC working group shared that the Developer Release of sBTC will go live mid-October.

Bitcoin Unleashed: London

Bitcoin Unleashed will host Bitcoin Core Developers, Layer-2 technologists, builders, investors, and entrepreneurs. Speakers include Ordinal powerhouses like On Chain Monkey and innovative Bitcoin builders and leaders like Jameson Lopp, Co-founder & CTO, Casa, Daniel Fogg, President & CTO, IOV Labs, Teana Baker-Taylor, VP, Policy & Strategy, EMEACircle, Muneeb Ali, Co-Creator, Stacks, Pete Rizzo, Editor, Bitcoin Magazine, Editor At Large, KrakenContributor, Forbes, and more.

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