Bitcoin DeFi project Elastos closes $20M investment round
2025-01-31
Category: None

Web3 infrastructure provider Elastos has closed a $20-million investment round as part of a broader push to bring more decentralized finance (DeFi) services to the Bitcoin BTCUSD market. 
According to a Jan. 30 announcement, the investment came from Rollman Management Digital, a global investment network that backed several early blockchain projects, including Ripple and Ethereum.
The announcement claimed that Elastos is now one of Rollman’s top five holdings.
Elastos launched its Bitcoin DeFi protocol in the second quarter of 2024, allowing users to collateralize their BTC holdings and access Ethereum smart contracts, where they can perform swaps and other DeFi functions. 
Elastos is one of several companies looking to bring DeFi functionality to the Bitcoin network. Some of the more established players in the space are layer-2 solutions Stacks, RSK and Babylon, which already host Bitcoin-native ecosystems. 
Meanwhile, crypto exchange Binance has also expanded its Bitcoin DeFi offerings by announcing BTC staking with Babylon.
As of Jan. 30, Bitcoin’s total value locked, or the total value of BTC held on DeFi applications, exceeds $7.2 billion, according to DefiLlama.
Bitcoin institutionalization grows
Demand for Bitcoin-centric financial services appears to be growing following the approval of spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in early 2024. 
The US Bitcoin ETFs currently hold more than $124 billion in net assets, according to CoinGlass. After a brief lull, ETF buying pressure roared back in early January, largely in anticipation of a pro-crypto Trump administration.
A changing of the guard at the US Securities and Exchange Commission with the nomination of pro-crypto Paul Atkins to chair is also expected to bode well for the industry by encouraging more investors into the space. Greater regulatory clarity could give investors more confidence to deploy their assets across DeFi applications.
The growing institutionalization of Bitcoin will enable “novel DeFi strategies [to] emerge across the risk curve with Bitcoin as a collateral asset,” Jacob Phillips, co-founder of BTC staking protocol Lombard, told Cointelegraph.