Bitcoin payments company Breez has announced that Seetee, the bitcoin-focused subsidiary of Norwegian investment group Aker, has become their newest investor.
“Seetee’s investment shows that they believe Breez can help bitcoin achieve its destiny as a currency and do so in accordance with Bitcoin’s foundational principles of openness, decentralization, and autonomy,” said Roy Sheinfeld, co-founder and CEO of Breez.
Breez is focused on building the network’s payments infrastructure, leveraging the Lightning second-layer network. By providing a seamless and fast Bitcoin experience on top of Lightning, Breez helps users to take advantage of the unique value proposition of Bitcoin – final, unstoppable, uncensorable money.
The Lightning Network is a decentralized scaling solution for Bitcoin that abstracts small transactions between users away from the Bitcoin blockchain. It utilizes smart contracts to settle the final balance of those payments into the Bitcoin “base layer” while ensuring that all transactions abide by the rules of the Bitcoin protocol.
By not requiring the transaction fees or wait times that on-chain Bitcoin transactions typically do, Lightning enables its users to enjoy affordable, fast, and private payments.
Therefore, the second-layer network debunks common criticisms that bitcoin could not scale to be a proper medium of exchange –– an essential property of money. The people of El Salvador, for instance, have already been experiencing the power of Lightning.
And the more Lightning grows, the closer Bitcoin gets to enabling global, peer-to-peer, trustless, instant payments. Seetee sees that potential and is joining the community tighter now after realizing the power of Bitcoin earlier this year. Breez is the first software venture to join Seetee’s portfolio.
“The team at Breez is…building free open-source software that is intuitive and a pleasure to use while respecting the user’s rights,” Seetee said. “Its non-custodial and trust-minimized architecture allows consumers, merchants, content creators, and other peers to transact on the Lightning network quickly and easily. No configuration or expertise required.”