BOB raises £18m to bring idle Bitcoin into DeFi via BitVM bridge
This article covers BOB, a London-based blockchain startup, which has completed a community token sale that takes its total funding to more than £18m. The move aims to progress the startup's transition to community governance and to increase Bitcoin liquidity in decentralised finance, affecting DeFi users, investors and infrastructure builders.
BOB, a London-based blockchain startup, has completed a community token sale that takes its total funding to more than £18 million. The sale allocated 2 percent of $BOB tokens to 2,133 participants and raised about £3.1 million; the Token Generation Event is now expected as BOB moves toward community governance.
Why it matters
The raise is a sign of continued activity in crypto infrastructure funding and of projects seeking broader token distribution as part of governance transitions. BOB positions itself as a vehicle for bringing more Bitcoin liquidity into decentralised finance, a market it says is currently using a very small share of total BTC. If successful, the protocol’s ambition to increase Bitcoin participation in DeFi could change capital flows between chains and influence how institutional and retail holders use BTC.
Inside the product
BOB’s roadmap and recent technical progress focus on interoperability and efficiency for Bitcoin in DeFi workflows. Key milestones the company highlights include:
- Launching what it describes as the first hybrid zero knowledge rollup, intended to improve transaction throughput and privacy trade-offs compared with on-chain alternatives.
- Deploying a BitVM bridge on testnet with institutional partners to enable cross-chain interactions between Bitcoin and other chains.
- Introducing a Bitcoin intents system designed to provide one-click BTC access across major chains.
BOB estimates there is about £508 billion of idle Bitcoin it could target and cites current BTC utilisation in DeFi at roughly 0.3 percent, with an aspirational comparison to Ethereum’s higher DeFi usage. The protocol’s token mechanics and governance steps feed into these product plans as it prepares for wider community control.
Who are the investors?
The community sale was led by BOB Labs and executed through launch platforms CoinList and Gate Web3 Launchpad. The sale allocated 2 percent of $BOB tokens to 2,133 global participants and contributed approximately £3.1 million to BOB’s cumulative funding.
Prior to the community sale, BOB had raised about £15.5 million across Seed and strategic rounds since launching in 2024, bringing the total to above £18 million. Token economic terms for the community tranches were set at fully diluted valuations of £120 million for the Community Member tranche and £168 million for the Public tranche. Both tranches feature a 50 percent day-one unlock and the remaining 50 percent vesting linearly over three months. Team members and venture backers are subject to a longer vesting schedule of three years with a 12-month cliff.
The sale paperwork and use of widely used launchpads reflects a strategy of broad distribution and early supporter incentives rather than restricting allocations to a small number of private investors.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Alexei Zamyatin, Co-founder at BOB, said:
The community sale was an important part of our pledge to transition BOB to community ownership. As the number 1 Bitcoin DeFi platform in terms of liquidity and users, we now have an aligned group of community protocol owners who, alongside tier 1 institutional funds, DeFi founders and leading BTC businesses, will be the driving force behind BOB’s mission to become the Gateway to Bitcoin DeFi, everywhere.
Zamyatin frames the sale as a step toward decentralised governance and a larger user base participating in protocol decisions.
The bigger picture
BOB’s raise and token distribution sit within broader industry trends: projects are increasingly combining technical launches with community-oriented tokenomics to secure both capital and user alignment. The company’s focus on bringing BTC into DeFi touches on competition between ecosystems for liquidity and on debates about custody, composability, and regulatory clarity for tokenised infrastructure.
For UK crypto infrastructure ambitions, a London-based team advancing Bitcoin-focused interoperability underscores the city’s continued role as a hub for teams building at the intersection of traditional finance and decentralised systems. As BOB moves toward its Token Generation Event and community governance, regulators and institutional participants across Europe will be watching whether such models scale without compromising security or compliance.
This development is part of a wider European and UK trend in which startups and investors are testing new forms of token distribution and governance while building interoperability layers between Bitcoin and smart-contract chains.
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