Portal To Bitcoin Raises $25m And Launches Atomic Otc Desk 2025

Portal to Bitcoin raised $25 million and launched an HTLC-based atomic OTC desk aimed at enabling trustless, crosschain large trade settlement.

Bitcoin-native interoperability protocol Portal to Bitcoin has raised $25 million in funding amid the launch of what it describes as an atomic over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk.

According to a Thursday announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the company raised $25 million in a round led by digital asset lender JTSA Global. The fundraise follows previous investments by Coinbase Ventures, OKX Ventures, Arrington Capital and others.

Alongside the fresh funding, the company rolled out its Atomic OTC desk, promising “instant, trustless cross-chain settlement of large block trades.” The newly deployed service is reminiscent of crosschain atomic swaps offered by THORChain, Chainflip, and more Bitcoin-focused systems such as Liquality and Boltz.

What sets Portal to Bitcoin apart is its focus on the Bitcoin (BTC)-anchored crosschain OTC market for institutions and whales, along with its tech stack. “Portal provides the infrastructure to make Bitcoin the settlement layer for global asset markets, without bridges, custodians, or wrapped assets,” said Chandra Duggirala, founder and CEO of Portal.

Related: Anchorage–Mezo partnership opens institutional access to low-cost BTC-backed loans

Portal to Bitcoin leverages Hashed Timelock Contracts (HTLCs) across multiple chains and Bitcoin Taproot contracts to swap native BTC for native assets on integrated blockchains in a non-custodial manner, with a strong focus on reducing trust assumptions. HTLCs are designed to ensure that either sides complete the exchange or both sides recover their original assets.

It leverages BitScaler, a layer-3 resembling Lightning Network built on top of Bitcoin and using Taproot and policy templates. It opens channels much like Lightning channels, introducing a hub-and-spoke structure where validator federation is the hub and liquidity providers are the spokes. Trades in those channels are secured with HTLCs.

For the end-user, this means they do not have to trust wrapped tokens with federations and instead deal only with native assets on their native chains. The system also guarantees that if the function halts mid-swap and HTLCs expire, funds can be reclaimed.

Duggirala told Cointelegraph that while atomic swaps exist, THORChain and Chainflip are “based on vaults taking custody of funds from both parties” that are controlled by validators. U

Source: CoinTelegraph