BitDAO is a collective of stakeholders and builders who enable the creation and use of mutually beneficial Web3 ecosystems of programs, people, and publically available goods. DAO is a term that describes a Decentralized Autonomous Organization DAOs act as base platforms that allow venture capitalists to democratize the cryptocurrency and the blockchain space. \ BitDAO aims to invest in decentralized finance projects, applications, and platforms. It essentially wishes to act as a noncustodian bank for holders of crypto. \ Unlike DAOs that are protocol specific like MakerDAO, BitDAO focuses on projects and efforts in the decentralized finance space and the cryptocurrency space by making efforts to support new cryptocurrency projects and collaboration within different protocols. \ BitDAO’s native cryptocurrency token is known as BIT. It acts as a governance token for the platform. ## **History** BitDAO was founded by Bybit, a derivative exchange started in China and headquartered in Singapore. It raised $230 million from it’s first funding round led by Peter Thiel of Pantera Capital, and Dragonfly Capital. \ The governance token for BitDAO, BIT, was auctioned on the token launch app MISO by the decentralized exchange SushiSwap. The launch raised 112,000 Ethereum coins which was around $325 million from 9200 participants. 180 million BIT tokens were purchased using ETH while 20 million BIT tokens were purchased using SUSHI, the native cryptocurrency of SushiSwap. ## **Biggest Claims to Fame** BitDAO ‘s cryptocurrency token BIT is available on many of the most used exchanges including Binance, KU coin, IDEX, and many more. This makes it easier for people with BIT to easily trade and invest across cryptocurrency markets without needing to trade their cryptocurrency for traditional currency. This is an advantage over many of the newer cryptocurrencies that are only available to trade on smaller cryptocurrency exchanges. \ BitDAO was able to get a partnership with Binance and Huobi very early into their cryptocurrency market experience. The fact that they were able to get such big partnerships did them a lot of good in getting exposure. The partnerships also give them great opportunities for liquidity and encouraged investors to invest in them. \ BitDAO allows for peer-to-peer trading. Peer-to-peer trading allows for the trading of digital assets without the need for the involvement of a third party. By excluding the third party, the cost of transactions and trading goes down and the rate of liquidity goes up. \ BitDAO has the means to immediately settle trades without needing to involve a third party. This means they reduce the amount of time it takes to finalize transactions greatly. ## **Biggest Criticism** Holders of BIT hold voting power. Since the majority of BIT is held only by a small percentage of people, this means very few people can vote for changes on the network that a majority of users and holders of BIT do not approve of without consequence, which could also mean people may as well not have any say if they hold only a few BIT. \ BitDAO is centralized. BitDAO is owned and run by Bybit, a centralized cryptocurrency. This goes against the founding principles of cryptocurrency and eliminates a significant percentage of the market that BitDAO targets. It also means finances are not as secure as they could be since a centralized company has access to the finances on the platform. \ The BitDAO platform only supports Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies. Users of the platform can only use those two cryptocurrencies to transact and trade on the platform. This is a significant issue since buying into either Bitcoin or Ethereum is very expensive, especially if the transaction or trade happening is not a very big one. It removes a large percentage of cryptocurrency users from being able to transact on the platform. ## **Team** Mohamed Rauf is the Chief Executive Officer of BitDAO. He worked at the companies Dolce and Gabbana, Saks, SuitSupply, and Canali before he moved to work at BitDAO. \ Arby Leonian is the current Chief Operating Officer at BitDAO. He had previously worked at Uppsala and Kommun before moving on to work at BitDAO.