Hemi Raises $15 Million to Help Bitcoin Realize DeFi Potential

Hemi, which bills itself as the “largest programmability layer on Bitcoin,” raised $15 million.

The company’s funding round is designed to help fuel further growth on Bitcoin, according to a Tuesday (Aug. 26) press release.

With a market cap of $2.3 trillion, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency’s potential in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space remains largely unrealized, the release said.

“Until now, developers had to choose between Bitcoin’s unmatched security or the flexibility of DeFi on other chains,” the release said. “Hemi eliminates that trade-off, merging Bitcoin’s trust and resilience with Ethereum programmability into a super network, finally unlocking Bitcoin for use in modern financial applications.”

Hemi creates a platform for applications that let users earn, borrow, trade and build on Bitcoin, while connecting to other blockchains, according to the release.

“The breakthrough Hemi Virtual Machine (hVM), a full Bitcoin node embedded inside an Ethereum Virtual Machine, creates a powerful new layer that fuses Bitcoin’s security with Ethereum’s flexibility, unlocking a new frontier for programmable bitcoin,” the release said.

The funding round came ahead of Hemi’s token launch, details of which will soon be finalized and announced, per the release.

In other crypto news, PYMNTS wrote this month about the institutional custody gap that is holding the industry back from wider mainstream embrace.

“This isn’t just about securing private keys. It’s about building a custodial system that institutional players can trust and that regulators can accept,” that report said. “Until that gap closes, the sector will struggle to fully transcend its hedge-fund roots and become a backbone of mainstream finance.”

At the same time, it appears that institutional-grade custodial services for crypto are becoming a must-have for the marketplace, with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offering more details this month about the U.S. bitcoin reserve. He valued the reserve in the neighborhood of $20 billion and said the Treasury is seeking budget-neutral ways to acquire Bitcoin to expand the reserve.

“Major players like multinational financial institutions are taking notice,” PYMNTS wrote. “Citigroup, for example, is reportedly exploring custody and payment services for stablecoins and crypto ETFs. Executives cited relevance within Citi’s services business, which includes treasury, cash management, cross-border payments and other services to large companies and institutions.”