Montréal Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream has raised $210 million USD ($289 million CAD) in convertible note financing to expand its capacity as a Bitcoin treasury and innovate its layer-2 technology offerings.
Delaware-based Fulgur Ventures, which typically invests in Bitcoin and layer-2 technology startups at the early stage, led the convertible note round. It had previously supported Blockstream’s $125 million USD convertible note raise to expand its Bitcoin mining operations in 2023.
The company declined to disclose any other investors to BetaKit. Fulgur Ventures did not respond to a request for comment.
The latest fundraise brings Blockstream’s total funding to over $822 million CAD to date. Blockstream raised $266 million CAD ($210 million USD) for its Series B round in 2021, making waves as a rare Canadian unicorn with a $4 billion USD valuation.
In December 2022, Bloomberg reported that Blockstream was fundraising at a lower valuation than its 2021 Series B round. The company declined to disclose an updated valuation to BetaKit.
The latest round of financing will help tackle three priorities: bolstering its Liquid and Lightning layer-2 networks, growing its Bitcoin treasury to meet global demand, and increasing its crypto mining activities, Blockstream said.
Blockstream co-founder and CEO, Dr. Adam Back, said that the latest fundraising round ‘represents a defining moment for Blockstream as we embark on a critical new phase of growth to further bridge the gap between Bitcoin and the wider world of finance.”
In addition to the capital, new leadership is coming to Blockstream. Michael Minkevich was named the company’s new COO, leaving his position at Luxoft, a Switzerland-based enterprise technology company that went public in 2013.
“Blockstream has a unique product portfolio and one of the best engineering teams building reliable Bitcoin solutions, making it perfectly suited to lead the ongoing transformation of the FinTech industry,” Blockstream COO Michael Minkevich said in a statement.
Founded in 2014, Blockstream is a crypto infrastructure company for Bitcoin and blockchain technologies. The startup was founded in Victoria, but now lists its headquarters in Montréal. It positions itself as “the global leader in financial infrastructure technology powered by Bitcoin.”
Blockstream’s leading product, the sidechain technology Liquid network, was launched in 2018. Liquid allows for a range of decentralized finance trading, such as trustless Bitcoin swap settlements and asset tokenization. According to Blockstream, the exchange has issued over $1.8 billion USD in assets and holds over 3,844 BTC.
Blockstream noted increasing institutional interest in Bitcoin to store assets on the blockchain, including successes in the real-world assets space. Last year, the Mexican legal company Mifiel used Blockstream’s Liquid network to issue a first-of-its-kind digitized promissory note product, with issuances totalling over $1 billion USD.
Blockstream’s latest financing comes amid rising action for the crypto industry, with the price of Bitcoin rising to nearly $68,000 USD just this week. Bitcoin has recovered this year after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. in January, following a more volatile performance in 2022 amid industry scandals and interest rate hikes.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Dmitry Demidko.