The tide may have gone out on Bitcoin ordinaries, but there is still plenty of investment being made in Bitcoin-centric companies. River, a US-based Bitcoin (BTC) technology and financial services company, has recently announced their $35 million Series B equity funding round, despite the bear market.
The round was led by Kingsway Capital, with notable contributions from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Cygni, Goldcrest, and Valor Equity Partners. Alex Leishman, CEO of River, says that the new wave of Bitcoin interest is “largely driven by business and institutional adoption”. He also states that “it’s not fueled by hype. This year’s bank failures and bailouts have been a wake-up call, revealing the cracks in the traditional financial system and reminding us why Bitcoin is so important – it’s a secure path to a stronger and more transparent global economy.”
The San Francisco-based company manages one of the largest Bitcoin Lightning nodes, enabling payments and managing liquidity for the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
The River Lightning API makes it easy for companies to integrate with the Lightning Network. It has already become one of the key players in the Bitcoin payments landscape; El Salvador’s Chivo Wallet uses River for near-instant and near-free Bitcoin payments.
River was an early adopter of the Lightning Network, similar to global crypto exchanges like Bitfinex and Kraken.
The adoption of Lightning may soon spread further, with some of the world’s largest exchanges – Coinbase and Binance – considering it due to its low-fee and high-throughput payment network. At the Advancing Bitcoin conference in London, CEO Leishman said that “I still think that we are very early. Yeah, there’s a lot of cool things happening. We’re building this really amazing foundation protocol-wise.”
He also highlighted that it’s important to see more people “working backward from the real human problems as well. We need more of that.” As a result of the surge in memecoin mania, more exchanges and crypto companies may turn to the Lightning Network as a solution. River joins a growing list of Bitcoin companies making raises during the bear market. Custody service provider Unchained Capital has recently raised $60 million, while El Salvador’s education program has received significant investments from Bitcoin advocates around the world.
