Catenaa, Wednesday, February 12, 2025 – Bitcoin Ordinals project Taproot Wizards has raised $30 million in a funding round led by Standard Crypto, with participation from Cyberfund, Collider Ventures, and others. The funding aims to advance OP_CAT, a Bitcoin smart contract functionality designed to expand the blockchain’s programmability.
Co-founder Udi Wertheimer said the project will use the capital to develop OP_CAT internally and foster an ecosystem around it. “We’re really focused on OP_CAT as the future of Bitcoin,” Wertheimer said. “This will be both for development in-house and to help build the ecosystem outside of our company too.”
OP_CAT, or OPcode Concatenate, is a scripting function enabling automated and customizable Bitcoin transactions. Initially enabled by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, OP_CAT was later disabled due to limited use cases. Its resurgence aims to bring Ethereum and Solana-like programmability to Bitcoin, opening doors for new financial applications and decentralized protocols.
Taproot Wizards, founded in 2023 by Wertheimer and Eric Wall, gained prominence with Ordinals-based NFT collections, including Quantum Cats. The project’s first NFT mint in 2023 resulted in Bitcoin’s largest-ever block at the time.
Wertheimer predicted that OP_CAT’s flexibility will drive rapid innovation on Bitcoin. “Instead of having Ordinals and BRC-20s appear occasionally, new protocols will emerge daily, like in Ethereum’s early days,” he said.
Taproot Wizards continues to champion Bitcoin’s evolution beyond digital gold, fostering its use as an on-chain financial network.
