DeSo's Bitcoin-First Funding

A story about how DeSo (formerly BitClout) raised funding in an unconventional way through direct bitcoin deposits.

"What's funny is I worked on this blockchain for almost 2 years since early 2019. Through my last company Basis, where I raised $140M, I met a lot of investors. For DeSo, I worked on it for 2 years alone, brought on a couple good friends, and then talked to big names like Social Capital, Andreessen, Sequoia.

The 5,000 bitcoin came in before any corporate entity was set up. The blockchain would watch a treasury wallet and automatically give DeSo coins when it saw deposits. There were over 44,000 purchases, and I don't know 99% of who they are because they could just send bitcoin and get DeSo coins back.

Of those 44,000 purchases, only a few hundred were from people I actually talked to. That represented about $30M worth, which isn't a huge percentage. No one owns more than 5% of the supply. Importantly, they don't own equity in anything - all their interest is in DeSo tokens, the same asset anyone can hold. Some used corporate entities to convert dollars to bitcoin, but they're just holding DeSo like everyone else."