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Okcoin, Stacks Launch $165M Pledge to Support Bitcoin-Related Projects
The Bitcoin Odyssey is a year-long pledge taken by VC firms to deploy money into solutions that accelerate the adoption of bitcoin.
By Brandy Betz
Updated May 11, 2023, 4:03 p.m. Published Mar 10, 2022, 3:00 p.m.
Cryptocurrency exchange Okcoin has launched the Bitcoin Odyssey, a year-long pledge among venture capital firms to deploy $165 million into products that accelerate bitcoin adoption.
Participating firms include CoinDesk parent company Digital Currency Group, GSR and White Star Capital, among others.
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Bitcoin Odyssey was launched along with the Stacks Accelerator and Stacks Foundation. The capital and resources will go toward products being built on Stacks, an open-source network for bitcoin-based smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The capital will go toward solutions across Web 3, including the metaverse, play-to-earn games, decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFT) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO). Other areas of interest include CityCoins and GovTech.
The Odyssey initiative will be led by co-chairs Alex Chizhik, head of listings at Okcoin, and Stacks Accelerator partner Kyle Ellicott.
“We don’t want to create a centralized fund that allocates dictated amounts,” Alex Chizhik told CoinDesk in an interview. “What we want to do is essentially create a matchmaking service between the top-tier VCs and projects.”
“There’s no fixed allocated amount. There’s no minimum amount that we will give to each project,” he continued.
The initial funding target for Odyssey was $100 million, which was oversubscribed quickly, said Chizhik. He and Ellicott said they have continued to take calls from venture capital firms interested in participating in the pledge.
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