Beijing-based gaming and film production company Linekong Interactive, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), has announced a $15 million fund named "BTC Next" to invest in projects within the Bitcoin network. Linekong Online founder Wang Fang stated in a tweet on November 8 that the fund will focus on accelerating emerging projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem, encompassing "asset issuance protocols, trading markets, expansion, virtual machine, NFT, RWA, and GameFi." The company aims to participate in early-stage research and investment in Bitcoin network ecological assets, intending to publish its investment portfolio and update the list of Bitcoin ecological crypto assets.
BTC Next plans to explore opportunities within the Bitcoin network ecosystem, with a particular emphasis on projects that contribute to the programmability of Bitcoin, an aspect traditionally associated with newer blockchains like Ethereum. While Bitcoin has retained its core functionality since its inception in 2008, recent innovations such as ordinal numbers and inscriptions have expanded the ecosystem's capabilities, enabling users to create unique digital assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. In June, BitKeep (now Bitget Wallet) introduced support for deposits and withdrawals of BRC-20 Bitcoin tokens modeled after Ethereum's ERC-20 standard, facilitating further interoperability between the two blockchains.
On November 7, Binance launched the BRC-20 token Ordinals (ORDI), witnessing significant growth with a single-day increase of over 40%. The BRC-20 token has achieved a total market capitalization of $1.36 billion since its introduction. Linekong Interactive, founded in Beijing in 2007, initially operated as an online gaming company before going public on the HKEX in 2014. Wang Fang, the founder, stepped down as CEO in 2018 to concentrate on blockchain, where he initiated projects in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi), and Bitcoin mining. Wang is set to return as Linekong's CEO in 2022, aiming to enhance the integration of Linekong products with Web3 technologies.
