Biggest Names in Macro Back New $10B Digital Asset Exchange “Bullish”

Block.one, developer of the EOSIO protocol, is launching a new exchange called Bullish which looks to merge the stability of centralized exchanges with the nimble nature of DEXs, all the while backed by a $10 billion round from macro finance’s most prominent figures. 

Some of the well-known names in macro finance attached to this funding round are Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital and Founders Fund, Alan Howard, Louis Bacon, Richard Li, Christian Angermayer, Galaxy Digital, and global investment bank Nomura.

The investors will also serve as advisors to the exchange when it launches later this year. 

“The Bullish exchange will leverage blockchain technology and a new market architecture to revolutionize the high-performance trading landscape by transparently automating expensive third-party functions and turning them into yield-generating portfolio management tools to offer institutions and individuals better and safer access to the latest cryptocurrency investment strategies,” said Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer in a statement.

Block.one says the exchange will offer automated market making, lending, and portfolio management tools previously only available before on DeFi platforms while utilizing the EOSIO protocol and the EOS Public Blockchain. The $10 billion is split between investors and Block.one, the latter of which is capitalizing the exchange with $9.7 billion worth of bitcoins (164,000 BTC), $216 million worth of EOS tokens (20,000,000 EOS), and $100 million in cash. 

“The cryptocurrency market continues to benefit from institutional adoption, and Bullish is well positioned to leverage blockchain-based market structures that will play an important role in further improving access for institutional and retail investors,” Louis Bacon, founder of Moore Capital Management, said in the announcing press release. 

Before the launch, Block.one was best known for its EOSIO protocol, the tech stack behind the EOS Blockchain, which holds the crown for the world’s biggest ICO which netted $4 billion in 2018 to develop the protocol. However, in the time since the platform failed to materialize into something as significant as the size of its funding round.

In 2019, CoinDesk reported that the ecosystem was in trouble with developers quitting and activity coming to a standstill. One reason cited was EOS’ centralization in China and fears that it would become a target of state intervention.

A report from Outlier Ventures from mid-2020 showed that the number of active developers working on EOS was down significantly, with respective declines in dApp activity and GitHub updates. 

EOS’ token is up nearly 10% in the last 24 hours after the announcement, currently trading at $11, with a 20% jump in the moments after news became public according to CoinGecko.