The wave may have disappeared on Bitcoin Ordinals, but there is a strong investment flow into Bitcoin-only companies. River, a US-based Bitcoin (BTC) technology and financial services company is the latest company to make a splash.
River announced a $35 million Series B funding round despite a plummeting market. Kingsway Capital led the funding with a number of other notable names including Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, Cygni, Goldcrest and Valor Equity Partners.
According to Alex Leishman, CEO of River, the new wave of Bitcoin attention is “largely driven by the increased adoption and use of bitcoin by institutions and businesses.” He added:
"This push does not come from the attraction of BTC, but the collapse of banks and their bailout packages is a wake-up call, hinting at cracks in the traditional financial system and reminds us why Bitcoin is so important – it's a secure path to a stronger and more transparent global economy."
This San Francisco-based company manages one of the largest Bitcoin Lightning nodes, enabling payments and liquidity management for the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
Top Bitcoin Lightning nodes by capacity. Source: River.com
River Lightning API allows companies to easily integrate with the Lightning Network. This service has become one of the key platforms in the Bitcoin payments landscape; El Salvador's Chivo Wallet already uses River for near-instant and nearly-free Bitcoin payments.
River is an early adopter of the Lightning Network, similar to global cryptocurrency exchanges including Bitfinex and Kraken.
Snapshot of Lightning River node capacity and connected channels. Source: Mempool.space
Furthermore, the world's largest exchanges, Coinbase and Binance, may soon adopt Lightning as the world gradually gets used to the low-cost, high-throughput payment network. At the high-profile Bitcoin conference in London, CEO River Leishm told Cointelegraph:
"I still think we're really young. There's a lot of exciting things going on. We're building this absolutely amazing platform protocol."
He said it was important to see more people “working together behind real human problems. We need to address that more." In light of the rapid increase in mainchain transaction fees due to the meme coin craze, more and more exchanges and cryptocurrency companies may turn to the Lightning Network as a solution .
River has been on the list of Bitcoin companies that have successfully made money during the bear market. Unchained Capital, a custody service provider, recently raised $60 million, while El Salvador's education program received a lot of investments from Bitcoin advocates around the world.