EOS Soars As Thiel-Backed Group Inject $10 Billion Into Decentralized Crypto Exchange

Block.one, a blockchain platform whose long-time backers include billionaire VC Peter Thiel, is launching a crypto exchange that seeks to combine attributes of traditional bourses with the benefits of decentralized finance.

The exchange – will will be known as “Bullish Global” – is being capitalized by Block.one with about $10 billion in digital assets and cash.

Block.one said in a statement that the seeding includes 164,000 Bitcoins valued at around $9.7 billion, $100 million in cash and 20 million EOS tokens, which power Block.one transactions.

An additional funding round raised another $300 million.

The Bullish exchange will offer new automated market making, lending, and portfolio management tools to its users to deliver functionality that has previously been monopolized by incumbent players in traditional finance, while driving deeper liquidity to digital assets.

As a reminder, Decrypt explains that decentralized crypto exchanges (DEXs) don’t ask American citizens to enter private information, such as social security numbers or addresses, that centralized exchanges are compelled to require as part of the Bank Secrecy Act. Thus far, because DEXs don’t take control of assets, they’ve fallen outside such regulations.

Since your coins aren’t being held in a centralized exchange but in a wallet with private keys you hold, you’re immune to hacks. And even though centralized exchanges can go down for maintenance, on a DEX you can keep trading.

Decentralized exchanges generally try to embrace blockchain’s ethos of “trustlessness” and privacy. Your tokens remain in your possession until you trade them. Some people find that reassuring from a security perspective. For others, that level of responsibility is intimidating, and the risks are concerning.

DEX advocates mostly agree: those are the tradeoffs for true decentralization.

Investors in Bullish Global include Peter Thiel, Alan Howard, Louis Bacon, Richard Li, Mike Novogratz, Christian Angermayer, and Nomura. Novogratz said:

“Bullish’s sheer size and scale combined with Block.one’s experience in high-performance blockchain engineering will make Bullish a formidable player from day one. I’m excited to be on the journey with this team.”

Louis Bacon commented,:

“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.”

The renewed interest in Block.one has sent EOS soaring higher…

Back to its highest since 2018…

As CoinDesk explains, EOS is the native cryptocurrency for the EOS.IO blockchain platform with smart contract capabilities. The company Block.one created EOS.IO in September 2017 and it now has over 100 dapps with thousands of daily active users. It enables decentralized apps, or dapps, to be created by software developers. The platform is more scalable than many other blockchain networks, with the ability to process one million transactions per second without any fees. Its dapp development capability makes EOS similar to Ethereum with the notable distinction that transaction confirmations are done through a different type of consensus system.

In addition to EOS, Block.one, and “Bullish Global”, Palantir – founded by Thiel – has confirmed it will accept bitcoin as payment, and may invest in it too.

Palantir says it may add bitcoin to its balance sheethttps://t.co/Rh8HLtkt0t

— Steve Kovach (@stevekovach) May 11, 2021

It appears the adoption curve for crypto is not slowing down yet.