Bottlepay, a Payments Startup That Lets You Send Bitcoin on Social Media, Raises $15M

Bitcoin payments platform Bottlepay announced Tuesday it has secured £11 million (nearly $15.5 million) in a seed funding round.

• Participants in the round included Alan Howard, founder of hedge fund manager Brevan Howard; "present and former" Goldman Sachs partners; venture capital firm FinTech Collective; digital assets firm NYDIG; and entrepreneur Phil Doye.
• Bottlepay said the cash injection will be used to expand its team by 60%, develop the platform’s functionality and increase its international reach.
• Bottlepay says it aims to disrupt the payments space with an app offering international payments in bitcoin and fiat currencies in real time. Users can also make micropayments of "as little as a penny" and send funds via messages on Twitter, Reddit, Discord.
• The app, launched on Feb. 10, is built with the Lightning Network scaling solution, which enables cheaper and faster bitcoin transactions.
• “Raising £11 million and reaching a post-money valuation of £51 million [$71 million] is a testament to the scale of Bottlepay’s ambition, and an illustration of the effort and resources invested to build and design a revolutionary payments infrastructure of this magnitude,” said Bottlepay CEO Mark Webster.

Read more: Bitcoin App Bottlepay Is Back From the Dead With a New Lightning App