“When I first heard about Bitcoin, it was 2013,” laughs BlockSpaces CEO Rosa Shores, “and I thought it was a little bit crazy.”

A dozen years on, Shores and BlockSpaces are making serious advances – and raising serious capital. A Tampa-based company that has emerged as a leader in “Bitcoin-native infrastructure,” BlockSpaces announced a $2 million capital raise at the end of May and the addition of two new members to its board, including Chris Sullivan of Hyperion Decimus, one of the oldest cryptocurrency hedge funds.

Announcing the raise, Shores highlighted the opportunity to push Bitcoin into the realm of collateralizable asset, like gold or real estate. “We’ve built a system that allows Bitcoin-collateralized lending,” she said. 

That system is BlockSpaces’s ARCC, or auto-reconcilable collateral contracts. When making a large purchase – for instance, buying a house – a deposit is placed into an escrow account to go towards the purchase if completed, or as a penalty to the buyer if they don’t move forward. Until now, Bitcoin has been unsuitable to serve as collateral, since it can’t be automatically and conditionally transferred from one holder to another the way cash can. 

BlockSpaces technology allows a buyer to put down money in Bitcoin and facilitate a technical solution whereby the depositor keeps control of their Bitcoin, but both they and their counterparty agree the circumstances under which it should be returned to the buyer or transferred to the seller. BlockSpaces then transfers that agreement into code, which automatically disburses the Bitcoin appropriately when the contract is performed or defaulted. BlockSpaces’s algorithm will even automatically-correct collateral amounts based on the market price of Bitcoin.

In essence, BlocksSpaces’s ARCC is a contract and an escrow account all in one, with no human intervention required. 

“Bitcoin itself is coming to a place where it will have the stability and security to serve as collateral,” said Shores. “The bitcoin blockchain is the safest … it’s the only one we want to focus on.”

Shores emphasizes that BlockSpaces is known as “middleware” – they do not lend or physically hold any money for the parties to a transaction. Instead, they and their technology serve as an honest broker, opening a whole new realm to Bitcoin transactions. 

The local crypto community reacted with excitement to the announcement. “Most people are still treating BTC like dead weight on a balance sheet. This unlocks it,” said Lindsay Keyfauver, a St. Petersburg-based executive with extensive experience in the space. “It’s fair, it’s non-custodial, and it’s actually designed for scale.”

Jeremy Beal, a crypto entrepreneur and investor, emphasized how exciting it was that Shores and her co-founder, Gabe Higgins, achieved this breakthrough. “They are ahead of the curve on this – this is what institutions like BlackRock are doing,” said Beal. “The fact that it will be another step towards BTC becoming a valuable asset will be huge for Tampa/St. Pete.”

Beal also noted that Shores and Higgins ran the area’s longest-standing Bitcoin meetup – and one of the longest anywhere in the world. “They are under-appreciated for the contribution they bring to this space,” he continued. “They care about disseminating knowledge and helping people.”

Shores promised that collateralization was just the beginning – with launch coming for the “borrow/lend” use case in the next few months, BlockSpaces expects to shortly move into “Bitcoin-forward” and “blockchain-forward” operations, potentially as soon as the end of the year. This will allow for arbitrage opportunities based on the availability and price not just of Bitcoin, but of the blockchain underlying it itself.

For Shores, who has also been advising regulators in Washington on potential uses of Bitcoin for a strategic cryptocurrency reserve and “Bitbonds,” BlockSpaces has come a long way from its origins as a networking and innovation hub.

“Our infrastructure can support all sorts of Bitcoin-backed instruments,” she said. “If Bitcoin is being used, our infrastructure can support it.”