Bitcoin Hyper has pulled in $29.5 million in a presale for a new layer-2 project that aims to bring faster transactions and richer on-chain experiences to Bitcoin — while still settling back to BTC’s base layer. What it is - Bitcoin Hyper is building an off-chain execution layer that processes transactions and smart-contract-like activity outside Bitcoin’s base chain, then finalizes settlement on Bitcoin. The team says this preserves Bitcoin’s core protocol unchanged while delivering much higher throughput for apps. How it works - Instead of changing Bitcoin’s conservative, security-first base layer, Bitcoin Hyper runs transaction execution on the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). Using the Solana VM is intended to enable fast execution speeds and developer tooling familiar to the Solana ecosystem, with Bitcoin retained as the ultimate settlement and value layer. Target use cases - The project is pitched for DeFi, gaming, micropayments and other applications that need quick, low-cost transactions but want to rely on Bitcoin as the native medium of exchange. According to the developers, apps on the platform will use BTC directly rather than wrapped tokens or substitutes. Token and economics - Bitcoin Hyper’s HYPER token is positioned to serve three roles: gas for transactions, a staking asset to secure the network, and a governance token for protocol decisions. The presale success underscores investor interest in infrastructure that expands Bitcoin’s applicability beyond store-of-value use cases. Why this matters - Bitcoin’s base layer prioritizes immutability and security over raw transaction speed, which has led builders to explore layer-2 approaches. Bitcoin Hyper joins a growing set of L2 efforts seeking to increase Bitcoin’s utility for everyday payments, DeFi primitives and interactive applications while anchoring finality to Bitcoin’s blockchain. Market context - The fundraising arrives amid ongoing market debate about Bitcoin’s role: the asset has seen heightened volatility after crossing six-figure price levels earlier in the year, and its predominant narrative as a store of value continues to be scrutinized by traditional analysts and market participants. What to watch - Key questions for Bitcoin Hyper will include decentralization and security trade-offs of relying on the Solana VM for execution, integration with existing Bitcoin infrastructure, and rollout timelines for developers and users. The $29.5M presale signals appetite for Bitcoin-native scaling solutions, but the broader ecosystem will be watching implementation details and real-world performance. (End) Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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