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- Liquidium has raised $1.25 million to advance its innovative lending platform that utilizes Bitcoin Ordinals in which the NFTs act as a borrower’s collateral.
- Sora Ventures, one of the investors, says that Liquidium is taking the lead in a sector that could blow up as Ordinals go beyond speculation and accrue real value and utility.
It’s been the year of Bitcoin Ordinals, with no other trend coming close to the dominance of the premier NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain. This surge in adoption has led to the growth of related services, including Ordinal-based lending. Liquidium is leading in this sector and today, it has announced raising $1.25 million for its innovative lending platform.
A variety of investors contributed to the fundraising round, including Sora Ventures, an investor whose portfolio includes AI hedge fund Numerai, gaming tech firm Immutable and leading crypto media outlets. Others included Side Door Ventures, Spicy Capital VC, Bitcoin Frontier Fund and ACTAI Ventures.
We are honored to announce the completion of our pre-seed round, raising $1.25M+.
A big thank you to @ACTAIVentures, @sora_ventures, @BitcoinMagazine, @BTCFrontierFund, @sidedoor_vc, @SpicyCapitalVC, as well as to multiple strategic angels for believing in Bitcoin DeFi. pic.twitter.com/Xgm06m7CnP
— Liquidium | Ordinal DeFi (@LiquidiumFi) December 11, 2023
Bitcoin Ordinals are the brainchild of Casey Rodarmor, a Bitcoin developer who brought NFTs into the Bitcoin world in January this year. Unlike other NFTs, they are inscribed on a satoshi, which is the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin. After launching in January, they blew up and by August, they had topped 21 million.
As their adoption grows, so do other related services and lending is one of the most critical. With Liquidium, Ordinals owners can place them as collateral and obtain cash loans. This model is established in Ethereum and other leading NFT platforms, with companies like NFTfi and Blur attracting thousands of users seeking to secure cash without having to sell off their treasured NFTs.
This market is growing tremendously and by May this year, NFT owners had borrowed over $375 million, using their NFTs as collateral, according to data from DappRadar.
Liquidium Targets Bitcoin Ordinals Lending
Commenting on why his company had seized the opportunity to invest in Liquidium, Sora Ventures Managing Partner Jason Fang hinted at the possibility of a utility token by Liquidium on the Bitcoin blockchain.:He added:
Liquidium is filling a huge market gap by introducing additional utility on ordinals, a core element to further boosting the value of ordinals use case. Given that fungible tokens are also in the form of ordinals, it will be very interesting to see how Liquidium can leverage this standard to grow their adoption.
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In his comments, Liquidium CEO Robin Obermaier said he aims to create a fair and transparent lending protocol, much like Bitcoin created a fair and transparent financial system.
“Bitcoin opened an era of fair, non-custodial, accessible transactions. Until recently it was limited to basic payments,” he stated, adding:
At Liquidium, we took this vision further and created the leading fair, non-custodial, and accessible lending market on Bitcoin, the most secure blockchain in existence.
Despite being a young startup, Liquidium has issued over 300 loans worth over $870,000, one outlet reports.