Bitrefill raises $2M to grow team and advance Lightning Network services
We’re thrilled to announce that we have successfully closed a $2M late seed round with a number of distinguished investors from the global cryptocurrency community. The round was led by Coin Ninja (makers of the DropBit app), with participation from Charlie Lee, Fulgur Ventures, Bnktothefuture, et al.
This funding will allow us to continue to build our suite of products and services for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, as well as expand into new international markets to enable more people to convert their coins into goods and services. We intend to strengthen our development and marketing teams for further growth. (We’re hiring!)
“We see it as a big token of trust that investors from the Bitcoin and broader cryptocurrency community have chosen to put their money behind us and support us in our growth journey.”
- Sergej Kotliar, Founder & CEO, Bitrefill
Bitrefill’s gift card sales saw notable growth during the Bitcoin bear market of 2018 and grew 100% Q1 2019. Currently, the biggest product selections are for US and European customers, but we will roll out a number of new products for selected other countries around the world throughout 2019.
Our team currently consists of 16 people with deep cryptocurrency industry knowledge and startup operational experience based in several countries around the world.
Bitrefill identified in 2017 that the Lightning Network is the most viable solution for scalable cryptocurrency payments and decided to make it a core competency of the company. We were first to market with payment acceptance and remain as the largest commercial actor on the Lightning Network. In 2019, we released the Thor & Thor Turbo products, which assist with onboarding to the Lightning Network. These services are now available via a new ThorAPI service, allowing any platform to integrate seamless channel creation, capacity management, and Bitcoin refills from Bitrefill with minimal friction.
About Bitrefill:
Bitrefill allows anyone to purchase gift cards or mobile refills from more than 1,650 businesses in 170 countries. Pay safely and privately with Bitcoin, Lightning and other cryptocurrencies. Founded in 2015, by Sergej Kotliar and co-founders Michael Grünberger and Michel Gustavsson.
“For years, Bitrefill has been executing on a mission that we think was, and still is, critical to the cryptocurrency space and that is to help create and improve the transaction utility value of crypto by opening up the opportunities to use it as a currency. This plays a critical role in legitimizing the space and drives both awareness and demand globally.
Bitrefill has been leading the charge of adoption - continuously expanding the number of businesses and partners worldwide that allow users to spend their crypto in exchange for virtually any good or service on the planet by way of gift cards. And equally as important, we think they’ve done a great job of not losing focus on what they do best (and better than anyone else) which is increase the reach of their service to so many countries and businesses while still maintaining a simple user experience so as not to overwhelm users.
We’re very excited about what Bitrefill has already done in 2019 and what they are executing on for the rest of the year because the team has established themselves as both thought leaders moving the entire space forward while maintaining a laser focus on making the Bitrefill better every month. In this space it’s so easy to get shiny new object syndrome and lose focus on what your core competency is but Bitrefill is one of the rare teams that can ship innovative product without alienating their core userbase.
We think they added a layer of legitimacy to Lightning by putting it out in the ‘real world’ so quickly. Lightning is powerful and we all know how important it is for scaling Bitcoin.”
Kyle Stalzer, Coin Ninja, https://coinninja.com“Bitrefill is helping to make living on cryptocurrency easier and I am excited to help them grow. Their participation on the Lighting Network opens up even more potential for Bitcoin and beyond.”
Charlie Lee“At Fulgur Ventures, we are focused on applications that demonstrate real business use of bitcoin and the Lightning Network. We have been following this space for several years and were inspired by the effort Bitrefill team has put into adoption of bitcoin and the Lightning Network in everyday life and by the progress that they have made so far.
We think Bitrefill has assembled an incredible team and their ability to attract talent and to launch experiments with business cases for adoption of the Lightning Network can help the industry realize full potential of the technology sooner and bring mass adoption closer.
As a venture capital fund focused on supporting adoption of the Lightning Network, we think Bitrefill already demonstrated that with some experimenting on the Lightning Network one can find that business application of this technology can be implemented sooner than one might have expected.
If you attend events where the Bitrefill team speaks, you will find they are very practical and educative, and at the same time quite a lot of fun.”
Oleg Mikhalsky, Fulgur Ventures, https://fulgur.venturesBnkToTheFuture is an online investment platform that has invested over $750m in funding rounds on its online investment platform, including Coinbase, Circle, Blockchain.com, Kraken, BitStamp, BitFinex, ShapeShift and BitPay. It is a securities business with partnerships and stakes in other licensed companies including a U.S. broker-dealer and FCA authorised corporate finance house amongst others. https://bnktothefuture.com
