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May 28, 2025 – BlockSpaces, a leader in Bitcoin-native infrastructure, today announced it has successfully raised $2 million in a strategic funding round. The round was led by Axiom, with significant participation from Leadout Capital, Sand Harbor Capital, Lisa Hough of Eberly Energy Ventures, and Bob Burnett of Barefoot Mining. This investment brings BlockSpaces' total capital raised to nearly $10 million.
The new funds will fuel the launch of ARCC (Auto Reconciled Collateral Contracts), the first Bitcoin-native collateral and risk management platform designed specifically for institutional use. ARCC is engineered to support a variety of high-volume, Bitcoin-backed bilateral financial contracts, including lending, OTC forwards, and innovative BitBonds.
Institutions have historically faced challenges when attempting to interact with Bitcoin using traditional financial infrastructure, which was never designed to handle the unique properties of digital assets. Bitcoin's bearer-based, fully settled nature creates complexities for legacy systems in areas such as custody, reconciliation, and risk management. BlockSpaces' ARCC platform directly addresses these issues.
"Bitcoin is more than a store of value—it's a transformative asset for institutional finance," said Rosa Shores, Co-founder and CEO of BlockSpaces. "Our solution empowers institutions to harness Bitcoin's full potential with unmatched security and operational efficiency. This funding, alongside our new board members, accelerates our mission to set a new standard for Bitcoin-native financial services and modernize capital market infrastructure."
Unlike anything in traditional finance, ARCC uniquely expands on Bitcoin's native programmability to act as both the collateral layer and the risk mitigation engine—a dual role not possible in legacy systems. This groundbreaking approach enables entirely new categories of financial contracts, such as delivered Bitcoin forwards and blockspace derivatives, which necessitate real-time collateral enforcement and on-chain settlement. ARCC achieves this through its pioneering Smart Channel™ technology, leveraging Hash Time-Locked Contracts (HTLCs) to create a trust-minimized execution environment and deliver smart-contract functionality natively on Bitcoin. The platform’s API integrates directly into institutional workflows to maximize capital efficiency, automate risk controls, and unlock new markets, all without relying on wrapped tokens, sidechains, or custodial bridges.
A critical market ARCC aims to address is the emerging need for blockspace forwards. As Bitcoin's blockspace becomes increasingly scarce with institutional growth, new markets are essential to manage volatility and transaction bottlenecks. Currently, time-sensitive transactions are often negotiated outside Bitcoin's peer-to-peer network, obscuring fees and potentially weakening the protocol's security model. ARCC's functionality enables a transparent forward market for blockspace, providing institutions with predictable, native access to Bitcoin's limited transactional capacity.
Bob Burnett, CEO of Barefoot Mining, a key partner, commented on this initiative: "For Bitcoin to fulfill its potential as the base layer of global money, it's essential that blockspace becomes predictable. A forwards marketplace will be a catalyst in reaching that destiny. Barefoot is proud to be the first company in the world to partner with BlockSpaces on this critically important initiative."
The funding round reflects growing investor confidence in Bitcoin as a foundational asset for institutional finance. Allen Farrington, Co-Founder and General Partner at Axiom, stated, "ARCC from BlockSpaces is paving the way to commercial-grade smart contracts on Bitcoin, utilizing the soundest money we've ever had—without the technological missteps and capital misallocation seen in ex-Bitcoin crypto."
In conjunction with the funding, BlockSpaces also announced the addition of two new members to its Board of Directors: Chris Sullivan, Co-Portfolio Manager at Hyperion Decimus, and Anders Larson, Co-Founder of Axiom. They join existing director Steve Brownlie, General Partner at Leadout Capital.
"The team at BlockSpaces has long been at the forefront of Bitcoin innovation," said Brownlie. "We're excited to continue supporting them as they launch ARCC." Sullivan added, "ARCC's customizable Bitcoin collateral solution unlocks wide-ranging capital efficiencies, further strengthening the Bitcoin ecosystem."
With this new capital, BlockSpaces is poised to redefine how institutions interact with Bitcoin, delivering the essential infrastructure needed to scale, secure, and modernize digital asset operations for the future of finance.
About BlockSpaces:
BlockSpaces is a Bitcoin-native infrastructure company revolutionizing capital markets with programmable, trust-minimized financial solutions. Its flagship platform, ARCC (Auto Reconciled Collateral Contracts), is a collateral and risk management platform for institutions, delivering smart contract-like functionality natively with Bitcoin. With seamless API integration into traditional systems, institutions can automate and scale high-volume Bitcoin-backed contracts—including lending, forward contracts, and BitBonds.
Compiled by CMO Intern team
