A Bitcoin Startup Raised $50M to Allow Users to Trade With ‘Bitcoin-Grade’ Security

Portal to Bitcoin, a Bitcoin-first protocol enabling trust-minimized cross-chain trading, has secured $50 million in new financing led by Paloma Investments, bringing the project’s total funds raised to $92 million.

The funding will support the expansion of BitScaler, the firm’s adapter that scales native Bitcoin without wrapped tokens, custodial bridges, or “message passing or other insecure alternatives,” according to an emailed announcement shared with CoinDesk on Thursday.

The company aims to make Bitcoin the settlement layer for millions of markets, including tokenized stocks, bonds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets.

“We want users to trade any asset, traditional or decentralized, and settle with Bitcoin-grade security, without custodians ever being involved,” CEO and founder Dr. Chandra Duggirala said.

Portal plans to use the new capital to expand its grants program and onboard both institutional and community liquidity providers. Pilot integrations with wallets and custody platforms are also underway to showcase non-custodial swaps.

If Bitcoin succeeds in becoming the default settlement layer for cross-chain trading, it could redraw the map of global crypto liquidity, anchoring tokenized markets directly to the world’s largest and most secure blockchain.