Stacks (STX) Surges Upon News of Big Financial Support by OKCoin

If you talk to any cryptocurrency aficionado about DeFi, Dapps, DAOs, NFTs, they are unlikely to think of Bitcoin as the first relevant blockchain, but OKCoin wants to change that.

Today, the Asian exchange announced a partnership with Stacks to bring the highlights of the WEB3 revolution to the Bitcoin blockchain – and the investment to achieve this is strong.

OKCoin and Stack Work Towards a More Advanced, Capable Bitcoin Ecosystem

As OKCoin explained on its social networks, they decided to provide $165 Million to a group of projects aimed at developing decentralized applications on Bitcoin.

The project, which they called The Bitcoin Odyssey, is supported by other venture capital firms such as Digital Currency Group, White Star Capital, GSR, among others.

In an interview for CoinDesk —a crypto news outlet funded by Digital Currency Group— Alex Chizhik, head of listings at Okcoin, explained that the initiative would be jointly managed and would not be taken as an absolute hierarchical structure where all decisions are centralized:

“We don’t want to create a centralized fund that allocates dictated amounts. What we want to do is essentially create a matchmaking service between the top-tier VCs and projects.”

Chizhik highlighted Bitcoin’s potential as the most decentralized network in the entire ecosystem, asserting that precisely for this reason, it “should remain at the epicenter of crypto adoption.”

However, it is worth noting that Bitcoin is not Touring-complete, i.e., it is not capable of running dApps or supporting complex instructions in the same way a traditional computer would, so the Bitcoin ambitions of Stacks and OKCoin are indeed an odyssey.

Markets React: Bitcoin Goes Down, Stacks Goes Up; Way Up

Markets had mixed reactions to the news.

Bitcoin has not yet been able to recover from its ongoing downtrend.

Price of Bitcoin, 24-hour candlesticks. Source: Tradingview

It has been hit hard by macroeconomic events, and although there was a breath of fresh air two days ago on the back of good news about the White House’s “crypto-friendly” stance, a further drop made the news about the fund a “meh” event among cryptocurrency traders.

In contrast, STX, Stacks’ native token, spiked 75%, but corrected and closed the day with 28% growth against the dollar and 34% against BTC, showing that the hodlers of this cryptocurrency were indeed more enthusiastic and optimistic despite the circumstances.

Price of Stacks, 24-hour candlesticks. Source: Tradingview

However, it is important to note that STX has a capitalization of just $1.5B, so price movements of this type are not that surprising. Currently, the token is trading at around $1.4.