Dear Alexians,

Holidays gifts have been delivered early! The past weeks have been a whirlwind of progress as we’ve shipped features and assets we’ve been working on for months. The XLink bridge is live with $aBTC actively trading, our CEX listings have expanded, we’ve seen the Alpha Release of the Bitcoin Oracle and our new Multichain Launchpad has it’s first candidate, Ordz Games, being voted on now.

To top it all off, just days ago ALEX hit a monumental milestone of $500M in transaction volume! This is all happening against the backdrop of a congested Stacks mempool with the mass popularity of the new STX20 token standard. Bitcoin layers are thriving with activity and the financial infrastructure ALEX has built is in greater demand than ever. Let’s look into the giant strides we’ve taken!

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XLink Approved and Deployed

Our last newsletter was published just days before the XLink governance vote passed with overwhelming approval from our community of $ALEX and $atALEX token holders. As a separate entity, XLink has a dedicated team that oversees its day-to-day operations and which is governed by the ALEX community as well as the bridge validators.

From the XLINK website you can open the app with Bitcoin, BRC20 and EVM bridges to select from. With multiple Bitcoin, EVM and Stacks wallets to choose from, one-click asset bridging on Bitcoin has never been more direct or intuitive. Be sure to follow the XLink X/Twitter account, Discord and Telegram for unique incentivized events, including an ambassador program and campaigns on Questn and Zealy.

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Introducing $aBTC: Multisig Wrapped Bitcoin on ALEX

Combining Bitcoin L1 with Stacks L2, $aBTC is revolutionizing Bitcoin DeFi. It simplifies DeFi interactions, setting a new standard in efficiency and ease-of-use. In order to seamlessly merge Bitcoin layers with cross-chain liquidity, we’ve created $aBTC as practical solution for our community.

Neither fully centralized, such as $WBTC, or built for max trust minimization as $sBTC will strive to do next year, $aBTC is a pragmatic and easy-to-use multisig representation of Bitcoin on Stacks L2. Through the XLink Bridge, you can wrap $BTC directly from Bitcoin L1 into $aBTC.

We’ve further expanded wrapping capability from $WBTC on ETH and $BTCB on BNB directly into $aBTC as well. Further details are available on our Medium.

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Alpha Release of Bitcoin Oracle

We’re thrilled to unveil the Alpha Relase of the Bitcoin Oracle, a groundbreaking step in DeFi, developed by ALEX, Domo, BestinSlot, Hiro systems, Unisat Wallet, Xverse and XLink. Our joint announce is published on

our Medium. This Alpha Release is a milestone towards a transparent, secure, decentralized financial ecosystem.

Key Features of the Alpha Release:

• BRC20 Transfers and Balances, validated by a smart contract-based consensus among BestinSlot, Hiro systems, Unisat Wallet.
• View our Indexer Performance Dashboard

Ongoing during the Alpha phase will be expanding indexer nodes, core client API releases and partnerships with Xverse and XLink that have joined in testing. Looking ahead, the Beta release schedule for Q1 2024, will further expand dApp and wallet integration. Further details have just been published for the Bitcoin Oracle Roadmap.

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New Multichain Launchpad

The latest iteration of the ALEX Launchpad is multichain. The Launchpad is closely integrated the XLink Bridge so that now projects can launch tokens distributed to BTC, STX, ETH and BNB chains. The smart contracts and IDO lottery remains on Stacks, but the bridging through XLink enables multichain liquidity to come in to participate and then be distributed back to winners.

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The First IDO Candidate: Ordz Games

We’re excited to announce the first multichain IDO candidate is Ordz Games, the "1st Gaming Project on Bitcoin.” We’re excited to see how our community of $ALEX and $atALEX holders will vote on a live BRC20 GameFi project. Voting is currently open and will close on December 23. Vote with $ALEX and Vote with $atALEX.

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ALEX Available for Custody on Copper

We're taking Bitcoin DeFi to the Institutional level! ALEX is now available for custody on Copper. This integration bridges the gap between DeFi opportunities and institutional investors, enhancing advanced asset management. The future of institutional Bitcoin DeFi is beginning with ALEX and Copper.

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New CEX Listings and Wallet Integration with Bitget

Over the past weeks $ALEX has been listed on Bitget, BitMart and Pionex, extending the reach of our community ever further and opening up the Bitcoin economy to millions of new users. Not only is $ALEX trading on Bitget, ALEX is now fully integrated with the Bitget wallet for a streamlined and seamless Bitcoin DeFi experience. Users can now connect Bitcoin to ALEX through Bitget in addition to Leather, Xverse, OKX, Asigna and Unisat wallets.

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In Closing

The winter has been long and cold but we kept our heads down and continued building. As the cryptocurrency market warms up in anticipation of projected interest rate cuts in 2024, steady progress towards Bitcoin ETFs and the Bitcoin halving coming in April, a BTC spring is unfolding.

All roads lead to Bitcoin, and all roads on Bitcoin lead to L2 solutions. ALEX is set to take its place in the sun as the finance layer of Bitcoin, seamlessly merging L1 assets with L2 capabilities. Here comes the sun!

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Best Regards,

The ALEX Lab Foundation