"Bitcoin Staking Giant Acre Raises $4M, Valuing ACRE Token at $90M"

Acre, a bitcoin staking platform, has raised $4 million in a strategic funding round, valuing its yet-to-be-launched ACRE token at $90 million. The round was led by Draper Dragon, Big Brain Holdings, and Orange DAO, with participation from undisclosed angel investors, including individuals from firms such as Lido, EigenLayer, Wormhole, Thesis, and Quantstamp.

The funding was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with a token warrant. Acre's co-founder and CEO, Laura Wallendal, declined to comment on the round's start date or any previous funding. Acre is a spin-out from Thesis, a bitcoin-focused venture studio behind projects such as tBTC, Fold, and Mezo Network. Wallendal previously held leadership positions at Thesis and currently serves as an advisor to the studio.

Acre enables users to deposit their bitcoin holdings to earn more bitcoin or "compound" their bitcoin through various methods, including staking rewards. Its first vault partner is Mezo, a Bitcoin scaling network. Acre provides bitcoin liquidity to decentralized networks, helping them grow while also enabling lending and other DeFi integrations beyond staking. Unlike traditional staking models, Acre is bitcoin-first, allowing BTC holders to participate in DeFi without needing to interact with new chains, manage multiple tokens, or compromise control over their assets.

To secure deposited bitcoin, Acre has selected tBTC, a decentralized custodian. The underlying BTC is held in a 51-of-100 multisig operated by decentralized nodes. The trade-off here is between speed and decentralized custody. Acre prioritizes security over instant transactions, with deposits taking about three hours to complete but remaining fully decentralized throughout the process.

Since launching its gated mainnet last July, Acre has collected 1,028 BTC as user deposits, worth over $100 million. With the platform now open to the public, Acre expects deposits to grow significantly. Acre currently has eight core team members, and Wallendal plans to expand the team across operations, engineering, and marketing as the platform continues onboarding new wallet partners and integrating with additional protocols. Wallendal declined to provide a timeline for the ACRE token launch but said that Acre would transition to being governed by a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) later this