Blockstream secures $210m debt funding

Blockstream closed a $210 million convertible bond financing round led by Fulgur Ventures.

According to the Bitcoin (BTC) infrastructure firm, the funding will help accelerate the company’s layer 2 products.

Blockstream said in a press release that it plans to use some of the funding to expand its mining capacity and purchase more Bitcoin. One of the companies that has successfully implemented this strategy in the crypto market so far is MicroStrategy.

As of this writing, Michael Saylor’s public company has raised 252,220 BTC.

In January of this year, Blockstream announced a $125 million convertible note financing raise that it said would be used to expand its institutional Bitcoin mining services. The firm had also requested $50 million for a similar initiative in August 2023.

Accelerating Layer-2 networks

According to Blockstream’s announcement on October 15, the $210 million convertible debt offering will support the development of two flagship layer-2 solutions: Liquid Network and Greenlight.

“This fundraise is crucial in our journey to bring Bitcoin to wider finance.”

Blockstream CEO Adam Back.

Liquid Network is a Bitcoin layer-2 solution that is interoperable with the Lightning Network.

Liquid, which was launched in 2018 as Bitcoin’s first sidechain, provides infrastructure that enables asset tokenization on the Bitcoin network. Blockstream stated that more than $1.8 billion in assets have been issued on the network, including stablecoins and tokenized securities.

According to Blockstream, Liquid has 3,844 Bitcoins locked on chain. Meanwhile, its growing adoption in the $300 billion real-world asset market includes a $1 billion note issuance by Mexico’s Mifiel.

Greenlight is a Blockstream solution that allows developers to bring custody-free Bitcoin Lightning Network-powered payments to decentralized applications and businesses.

Blockstream has appointed Michael Minkevich as its new chief operating officer. Minkevich is a former product engineer at digital asset strategy and engineering platform Luxoft.