Spartan Capital leads a $10 million strategic funding round for Bitcoin DeFi developer $ALEX, with participation from CMS Holdings, DACM, DWF Labs, Foresight Ventures, G-20 Group, Ouroboros Capital, Summer Capital, Cultur3 Capital, and EVG. $ALEX, which is developing Bitcoin's finance layer, plans to use the funding to continue its development on Stacks, a Bitcoin network layer 2. The company aims to enhance DeFi's accessibility and usability worldwide, grow its team, improve its platform's UI/UX, and strengthen its business development strategies. $ALEX's total value locked is nearly $200 million, with a transaction volume exceeding $1.3 billion across 52,892 wallets. The firm previously raised $2.5 million in March 2023. $ALEX's co-founders are Chiente Hsu and Rachel Yu, who have backgrounds in quantitative economics and finance, respectively.