Backing Cohort 3: Six Bitcoin-Native Companies Building the Productive Bitcoin Economy

Bitcoin is no longer just a store of value. Over the last twenty-four months, a generation of teams has started building the rails that turn it into productive capital: lending, payments, insurance, settlement, and now autonomous agents that can earn and spend in BTC without ever leaving the network, and the privacy and programmability layers that make institutional capital usable on it.

This is the thesis Draper Dragon has been investing against across our digital asset funds. Bitcoin is the most secure, most distributed, most institutionally adopted asset in crypto. What it has lacked, until recently, is the application layer that lets capital actually do something on it. That layer is now being built, and the teams that get it right will define the next decade of on-chain finance.

Part of how we source and back the founders building it is through the BitcoinFi Accelerator, a six-week program we co-lead with Draper Associates, Thesis, and Supernormal Foundation. Cohort 3 wrapped its Demo Day in April 2026. Every company below came through that program, each received a $150K accelerator check, and several have closed additional rounds that we either led or participated in.

Helios Finance

Helios Finance is a Bitcoin-native lending protocol whose flagship product, the Helios Reserve Card, lets users spend USDC and earn Bitcoin cashback without selling their BTC. Built on the MIDL Bitcoin execution layer, Helios allows holders to borrow against their Bitcoin instantly, with virtual and physical cards accepted at over 100 million merchants worldwide. The platform bridges long-term holding and real-world liquidity while keeping the experience Bitcoin-first, avoiding wrapped-asset bridges entirely.

Helios closed a $1M seed round in March 2026, led by Draper Associates, with Draper Dragon, 3Commas Capital, and the BitcoinFi Accelerator participating. The round closed shortly after Helios graduated from Cohort 3.

Why we invested: Bitcoin holders have always faced the same problem. Selling means triggering tax events and giving up exposure to the asset they trust most. Holding means watching capital sit idle. Helios resolves that tension by giving users a way to spend without selling, on rails that stay native to Bitcoin. The team is building exactly the kind of product that turns Bitcoin from a passive holding into functional capital, and they are doing it with the discipline of an on-chain, self-custodial architecture.

Resolvr

Resolvr is a Bitcoin-native insurance technology company providing risk-management infrastructure for participants in the Bitcoin economy. Its proprietary BDIC (Bitcoin Denominated Insurance Collaborative) is a first-of-its-kind embedded insurance network that integrates Bitcoin-denominated coverage directly into Bitcoin platforms, while letting carriers and brokers continue operating in stablecoins or fiat. Resolvr raised seed funding led by Axiom, with participation from Draper Dragon, Plan B Fund, Adam Back (Blockstream CEO), and notable investors including Nic Carter and Zac Townsend.

Why we invested: Every mature financial system needs an insurance layer. As Bitcoin moves from passive store of value into active collateral, lending, and capital markets activity, the participants taking on that risk need coverage denominated in the same asset. Resolvr is building the embedded infrastructure that makes Bitcoin-denominated insurance practical for the protocols, custodians, and platforms that will define the next phase of the Bitcoin economy. The team's architecture lets traditional carriers participate without forcing them to restructure their balance sheets, which is the right path to bringing real underwriting capacity on-chain.

OpenAgents

OpenAgents is an open-source AI lab building Bitcoin-native infrastructure for machine learning. Its flagship product, Pylon, is a distributed compute node that lets everyday users, including gamers, PC owners, and anyone with spare capacity on their Mac, sell that compute and earn Bitcoin in return. Pylons connect through Nexus, the company's coordination layer, which handles work assignment and payouts. The compute itself powers Psionic, OpenAgents' Rust-based machine learning framework for inference, training, embeddings, and image generation. Lightning Network and Cashu eCash underpin the payment layer, allowing AI agents themselves to transact and settle in Bitcoin without ever touching traditional fiat rails.

OpenAgents closed a $1.3M pre-seed round in April 2026, following its graduation from the BitcoinFi Accelerator Cohort 3.

Why we invested: The intersection of AI and crypto has produced a lot of speculation and very little working infrastructure. OpenAgents is one of the few teams building actual primitives: a real distributed compute network that's already live, with thousands of Pylons online and over a million satoshis paid out to contributors. As autonomous agents become a larger share of economic activity online, they will need a native unit of account and a settlement layer they can transact in without relying on traditional banking rails. Bitcoin is the obvious answer, and OpenAgents is building the platform that makes it usable.

Pyrus Financial

Pyrus Financial is a Bitcoin-native private credit firm bridging traditional consumer lending with Bitcoin. Through its "Bitcoin Fusion" product line, Pyrus lets consumers finance Bitcoin purchases over time (Bitcoin Equity Loans) or use existing BTC as collateral for mortgages and auto loans, without triggering taxable events or facing the liquidation risk that comes with conventional crypto-backed lending. Pyrus uses traditional underwriting (credit scores, cash flow) and a dual-collateral structure, treating Bitcoin like titled collateral held with regulated custodians like BitGo, Coinbase, and Fireblocks. All products are designed to comply with U.S. lending regulations (TILA, ECOA, state usury laws) and work with state-licensed lenders or federally chartered banks.

Pyrus received the standard $150K accelerator check as part of BitcoinFi Cohort 3 and is currently rolling out to a waitlist.

Why we invested: As Bitcoin matures as an asset class, holders face a real dilemma. Sell BTC for liquidity (triggering taxes and losing upside), or use overcollateralized crypto loans that carry significant liquidation risk. Pyrus's approach is the right one, treating Bitcoin like the credit-worthy collateral it has become and bringing the same underwriting discipline that the traditional mortgage and auto markets already rely on. They are building the bridge between the Bitcoin-native demographic and the consumer credit products they actually use, and doing it in a way that respects both sides.

LX

LX is a zero-knowledge encryption layer for Bitcoin. The protocol combines non-custodial encrypted vaults secured by ZK proofs and transitory keys, a privacy-preserving execution layer where those vaults serve as collateral, and an institutional SDK that lets exchanges, custodians, and trading desks integrate native Bitcoin privacy with a few lines of code. The flagship application is an OTC dark pool for BTC/USD. Unlike privacy-coin alternatives that require holders to migrate to a separate asset, LX operates natively on Bitcoin, keeping institutions on the asset they already hold, custody, and report on.

Following Cohort 3, we doubled down on LX with a follow-on commitment as part of the company's pre-seed round, joining Draper Associates and Peer VC.

Why we invested: Bitcoin's biggest unsolved problem is that every position, every transfer, and every counterparty is visible by default. Roughly $250B of BTC now sits on institutional balance sheets, all of it on a public ledger, and the chain-analysis apparatus that maps on-chain activity to real-world identities is only getting sharper. The market's instinct has been to reach for privacy coins, but that is a category mismatch. Institutions hold Bitcoin. The right answer is privacy on Bitcoin itself, and the global talent pool that can credibly port ZK directly to Bitcoin L1 is genuinely tiny. LX is one of the few teams credibly working on it, and the founder profile combined with the institutional-first GTM is the strongest possible signal we've seen in this space.

Charms

Charms is "Bitcoin's Universal App Protocol," a metaprotocol that brings programmable, portable assets to the Bitcoin ledger. Built by a team closely affiliated with BitcoinOS, Charms uses client-side validation of recursive zkVM proofs and an enchanted UTXO model to let developers build smart contracts and assets in mainstream languages like Rust. The system "enchants" Bitcoin UTXOs to carry programmable logic, and those assets can be beamed to other UTXO chains like Cardano without bridges or wrapped representations, preserving their smart-contract behavior across chains.

Charms is the first protocol to bridge Bitcoin and Cardano natively, with no intermediary custodian.

Why we invested: Bitcoin and Cardano share a UTXO architecture, which means the synergies between the two ecosystems are deeper than they look. Cardano has the governance and smart-contract sophistication Bitcoin lacks. Bitcoin has the liquidity and institutional adoption Cardano needs. The infrastructure to actually connect them, without the trusted bridges that have failed so many other cross-chain efforts, has not existed until now. Charms is the first protocol to build that connection natively, and the implications are significant for both sides. For Cardano in particular, a native bridge to Bitcoin opens the door to substantial new liquidity, new TVL, and a generation of applications that benefit from being settled on both chains. We see Charms as one of the most important pieces of infrastructure being built in either ecosystem right now, and the team is the right one to build it.

What ties them together

These six companies are building different layers of the same emerging system. Helios turns dormant Bitcoin into spendable, productive capital. Pyrus extends that liquidity into traditional consumer credit products. Resolvr makes the whole stack insurable. OpenAgents creates autonomous agents that will increasingly transact in Bitcoin. LX makes institutional flows on Bitcoin private and executable at scale. Charms gives Bitcoin the programmable asset and smart-contract layer it has lacked. Each company addresses a real gap, and together they extend the Bitcoin application layer in directions that did not exist eighteen months ago.

This is also a snapshot of what the BitcoinFi Accelerator is built to do: bring Bitcoin-native teams through a focused six-week program, give them the capital and operational support to ship, and back the ones that prove out their thesis with follow-on rounds. Cohort 3 is one of the strongest we've run, and the six companies above are a meaningful portion of what comes next for Bitcoin.

This is the Bitcoin economy we have been investing in, and we are excited to work with these founders as they build it.

To learn more about the Draper Dragon portfolio, see here.

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