Craft Ventures is joined by Kingsway Capital, Trammell Venture Partners and Balaji Srinivasan to accelerate Lightning Network adoption through the Galoy open source Bitcoin banking platform
Galoy, developer of Bitcoin banking software and creator of the Bitcoin Beach Wallet in El Salvador, has closed a $3 million dollar seed round.
The suite of Galoy solutions enables any community, company or government to offer banking services using Bitcoin and Lightning.
Co-Founder and CEO Nicolas Burtey believes Bitcoin is the base layer for the financial system of the future:
“The Bitcoin Protocol provides an open and Internet-native alternative to the closed and permissioned traditional financial system. We created Galoy to help any community or institution adopt this novel standard, and connect to the world’s foremost monetary network.”
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Co-Founder and President Chris Hunter says Galoy is lowering the barrier of entry associated with launching a bank:
“Twenty years ago, it was costly and cumbersome to start a software company. Today it is easy, fast and inexpensive to do such – thanks to the widespread adoption of cloud computing offerings.
Galoy is driven to similarly transform the world of financial services. In the years ahead, our clients will be able to launch full-service Bitcoin banking solutions with little more than the push of a button.”
Lead seed round investor Brian Murray, COO and Partner at Craft Ventures, notes:
“We are witnessing Lightning accelerate the evolution of Bitcoin from a speculative asset to a conventional payment rail. Galoy is building a platform that will make it simple for everyone around the world to use Bitcoin as money.”
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Manuel Stotz, Founder of Kingsway Capital said:
“Galoy is inventing Bitcoin tools at the intersection of SaaS and frontier markets. The team has already delivered a successful proof of concept in El Salvador. This can serve as a model for leaders in emerging markets to replicate.”
Galoy’s proof of concept, the Bitcoin Beach Wallet, helped inspire nation-state adoption of Bitcoin in El Salvador. Learnings from the project were recently published in the article “Bitcoin Banking for Communities: Lessons Learned from Bitcoin Beach.”
The platform is built for a wide variety of clients. Examples include:
- Communities: towns, religious organizations, charities – enabling the creation of circular Bitcoin economies, both locally and globally
- Governments: cities, countries, agencies – providing 21st century financial services directly to their constituents
- Companies: banks, merchants, consumer product businesses – offering novel Bitcoin experiences to their retail customers
The Galoy tech stack includes comprehensive features for launching a Bitcoin Bank: a secure backend API, mobile wallets, point of sale apps, compliance tools and administrative controls. Galoy also offers hosted “Banking-as-a-Service” (BaaS) solutions for those seeking fully-managed implementations and support. The complete codebase is open source and available for all to view, audit and utilize on GitHub.
In addition to the aforementioned investors, participants in the seed round include Fulgur Ventures, Bitcoiner Ventures and renowned angels Vijay Boyapati and Brad Mills.
“We believe Bitcoin represents one of the most important technologies ever invented by humanity,” Hunter adds. “The Galoy team is humbled to be at the forefront of its adoption, and excited to help bring Bitcoin to the first billion people.”
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