Velar, a crypto trading startup, has raised $3.5 million in venture funding to develop a suite of decentralized finance (DeFi) tools for Bitcoin's emerging DeFi scene. The company plans to launch the first perpetual swaps exchange that uses the Bitcoin network, which cannot host the smart contracts necessary for DeFi. Velar is betting on Stacks' upcoming Nakamoto Release, an upgrade to its universe of Bitcoin layer that will introduce a synthetic bitcoin asset called sBTC that's pegged to BTC, to unlock the DeFi value of bitcoin holdings. However, the concept of Bitcoin DeFi is still theoretical, and there is hesitancy among many bitcoin holders to participate in new ways to leverage their assets.