Pakistani-American and an alumnus of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Dr. Muneeb Ali, announced on Twitter that he has raised $150 million to build the largest ecosystem of Bitcoin applications through “Trust Machines,” a New York-based entity he co-founded recently.
He tweeted, “Along with JP Singh, a Princeton CS Professor, I’ve started Trust Machines to unlock the next chapter of Bitcoin apps. Building upon the success of Stacks, Trust Machines will build the apps and underlying tech to unleash the true potential of Bitcoin as a settlement layer.”
He also announced his appointment as Executive Chair of Hiro, a go-to developer tools company for Bitcoin, where he formerly worked as CEO, prior to founding Trust Machines.
Explaining the principle workings behind his latest venture, Dr. Muneeb Ali remarked, “Trust Machines will build upon the success of Stacks, create new Bitcoin apps, and contribute to underlying platforms, including Bitcoin itself. We’ll hire Bitcoin Core devs and unleash Bitcoin’s true potential for web3 apps. It’s time to build on Bitcoin!”
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Although the exact valuation was not disclosed, the initial funding for “Trust Machines” comes from US-based Breyer Capital, Digital Currency Group (DCG), GoldenTree, Hivemind, and Union Square Ventures (USV).
Jim Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, and an early Facebook investor, told Forbes, “We believe that bitcoin can be more than a store of value; it can also be the settlement layer and platform for Web 3. We’re excited to support Trust Machines and their mission to help bitcoin reach its potential.”
In many ways, the participation of big-name venture capital firms like Breyer Capital is a sign of growing confidence in Bitcoin among major asset holders of the paper-money game. Moreover, unlike other flagship virtual assets, Bitcoin has garnered widespread acceptance as a “store of value” due to its scarcity.
Trust Machines intends to use the funds generated to engage Bitcoin engineers to develop solutions that will allow investors to participate in the budding decentralized financial industry. It aims to build the applications and underlying technology necessary to unleash the true potential of Bitcoin as a final settlement layer. In this regard, a company statement read: “Our mission is to build the largest ecosystem of Bitcoin applications and grow the Bitcoin economy. We plan to hire Bitcoin Core developers and drive innovative research & development for scalability and functionality layers around Bitcoin”.
It is noteworthy that Dr. Ali co-founded Trust Machines with Princeton’s Computer Science Professor, Dr. JP Singh, with an aim to unleash “the maximum potential of bitcoin” by developing decentralized finance applications, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) on the rebranded Block stack, now known as Stacks, which is a smart contracts network linked to Bitcoin.
