BitDAO Raises Another $365 Million After Governance Token Launch

BitDAO has launched its governance token BIT, raising 112,000 Ethereum ($365 million) from 9,200 participants in a Dutch auction that concluded today.

BIT, the governance token of BitDAO, was auctioned on the decentralized exchange SushiSwap’s token launchpad MISO. A total of 180 million BIT tokens were purchased with Ethereum, while 20 million tokens were purchased with SUSHI, the native token of SushiSwap.

The token’s currently trading for $1.83, according to data from CoinGecko.

As the name suggests, BitDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, which is the crypto industry’s version of a shareholder-controlled business structure. DAOs are non-hierarchical and run on a system of smart contracts (self-executing computer codes). 

DAO decisions are made by the holders of governance tokens, which they can use to vote on various proposals; in the case of BitDAO, that’s the BIT token that launched today.

What is BitDAO?

BitDAO was founded in June by Bybit, a China-born derivatives exchange now headquartered in Singapore. On its launch, it raised $230 million in a round led by Peter Thiel, the Thiel-founded Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Dragonfly Capital.

Bybit also said it would inject regular revenue from its futures contracts trading—0.025% of Bybit’s total—to BitDAO. 

It’s a massive commitment that exceeds $1 billion a year at its current rate.

Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, told Decrypt in June that the exchange spun off into a DAO because decentralization has greater potential as it’s a much bigger playing field. “If we want to turn our business from billions to trillions, we cannot exist in a company-form, but a ‘social phenomena form,’” Zhou said.

BitDAO says its aim is to deploy its “significant financial and talent resources” to invest in projects across decentralized finance (DeFi), a suite of applications and platforms that offer non-custodial bank-like services for the holders of crypto.

Some of its projects include setting up R&D centers and a foundation to support research and investment in DeFi. It will also provide funding support to blockchain projects.

But all those decisions will come down to how the holders of BIT decide to cast their vote.