Thunderstruck⚡️What's the deal?

Dear Diary,

Everyone wants more Bitcoin! I can’t blame them. Our portfolio companies in the business of buying and selling “corn” (exchanges) have had record months, which is fantastic because we’ve invested in a bunch of them all over the world. Overall, everything looks positive in Bitcoin land. We’ve been light on the messages lately, but we have a roundup of recent updates and stuff to share with you.

Hey builders. It looks like the former Draper Bitcoin Accelerator is back up and running. Check out this BitcoinFi Accelerator! Applications open for a few more days, so go ahead and apply if you’re interested. Yeah…. sort of shitcoiny, but let’s see how they do this time. If you need $150k and it’s a good fit for you, give it a shot.

We’ve got a list of solid portfolio company updates, the latest deets of all our live deal offerings, and some founder interviews that are hot off the press.

Right now, everything is still a little slow in the Bitcoin VC world, but when that changes, we expect it to change rapidly. For now, it’s still a time to be heads down and building, which almost everyone is. Us included! We’re working on a top-secret new fancy dancy thing that’ll hopefully capture a lot of the funding activity in the Bitcoin world—coming soon.

The Bitcoin Conference is dishing out some free tickets for Open Source Devs! Check it out and apply if this is you.

We’ll be wrapping up our Lightning Ventures investments for Cloaked and Slice! We’ve got a packed pipeline of upcoming deals, so keep an eye out for them. Let’s jump in with updates on the latest and greatest companies in the Bitcoin universe.👇🏻

Yo! If you’ve invested through Lightning Ventures, you receive confidential company updates as they come in. Below are some public updates from our beloved portfolio darlings. Please let us know if you are an investor and are not receiving company updates.

⚡ Foundation Devices Passport is now Passport Core. Read the full update on their Foundation blog.

⚡ Breez has launched a comprehensive nodeless SDK tutorial for React Native and Expo, covering payment integration with videos, a demo repository, and detailed documentation.

⚡ Blink wallet v2.2.300 pre-release comes with some minor changes and bug fixes.

⚡ Blockstream has secured a multibillion-dollar investment for its Bitcoin funds. As reported by Bloomberg, the company will launch three funds on April 1, with external investors able to join starting July 1:

• Blockstream Income Fund: Offers $100k to $5 million loans in USD, using bitcoin as collateral.

• Blockstream Alpha Fund: Portfolio growth via Lightning Network infrastructure.

• Blockstream Yield Fund: Lending BTC with USD deposits as collateral.

⚡ Fountain App, one of the Podcasting 2.0 leaders, has updated. Version 1.1.16 lets users watch Nostr livestreams and join live chats during shows like Rabbit Hole Recap and Simply Bitcoin.

⚡ Wavlake v1.0.3, a social music app powered by Bitcoin, Lightning, and Nostr, includes improved Nostr event handling and various bug fixes.

⚡ Foundation Devices CEO Zack Herbert says the Trump administration is positioning Bitcoin as a key national asset, touting it as the 'Fort Knox of the future'’

⚡ Aqua Wallet v0.2.10 fixes the USDT amount displayed. Due to a bug in the swap order flow, and fixes a bug in Internal Send where the minimum value was not respected. Have you tried Aqua Wallet? Let us know what you think.

⚡ THNDR, a play-to-earn Bitcoin game pioneer, releases skill-based Blackjack titles integrated with instant payments via the Lightning Network.

⚡ Unchained now supports native SegWit addresses. New vaults now use SegWit addresses by default, and existing vaults can be upgraded.

⚡ Some of the latest updates to Theya mobile modular multisig app (currently available on iOS) include custom permissions for collaborative key management, multi-currency support, and AirGap mode for the Foundation Passport device.

⚡ Flash Wallet beta (not to be confused with the Flash app by Dread) is now available for testing. It is a self-custodial Lightning and Liquid wallet for merchants, built with Breez SDK. Upcoming features include offline transactions, point-of-sale tools, and automated payments.

⚡ Breez SDK Nodeless v0.7.1 (Liquid implementation) brings support for multiple Liquid assets, including USDT, the ability to drain all funds via LNURL-Pay, refundable swaps, real-time sync optimizations, regtest support, and more.

Orange Pill App - The de facto social media platform for bitcoiners, by bitcoiners! Some major updates were launched last month (and more in the pipeline - see their roadmap below), this app just keeps getting better. 2024 has been an excellent year for Orange Pill App. They grew by 2.3x and built a Bitcoin Treasury of 3.6 BTC.

Most recently, they launched “Mass Zapping”, which allows users to effortlessly zap every single person in any of your group chats — all at once!

If you’re a fan or a user of Orange Pill App, why not be an owner, too?

We joined Simply Bitcoin for a sit down with Orange Pill App CEO Matteo Pellegrini, be sure to check out the full video here.

Joltz is hot out of the gates and firing on all cylinders. They’ve got a ton of momentum from their recent news, updates, announcements, and partnerships, which just keeps coming!

If you’re interested in gaining exposure to the Taproot asset revolution, don’t sleep on this Joltz offering!

We’ll be hosting an AMA spaces on X for each of these Thunder Funder offerings. If you’ve got any questions for us, the founders, or the team, be sure to join! We’d love it if the Lightning Ventures investment community showed up in force, so if you can, add these to your calendars.

We’ve got two live deals for the Lightning⚡️Ventures syndicate right now: Cloaked and Slice.

This is an opportunity to invest in an existing Lightning Ventures portfolio company, Cloaked Services; some insanely awesome and accomplished Bitcoiners lead that. Details below 👇🏻

🚨 Blockstream’s Venture Arm is now leading this Cloaked Wireless round 🚨

Jonathan Wilkins and Jeremy Hill founded Cloaked. Jonathan was previously the Chief Security Officer and Co-Founder of Blockstream, Chief Security Officer of Bitcoin company River Financial, Security Architect at Yelp, Senior Researcher at MySpace, and Security Architect at Microsoft. Jeremy is another high achiever with a seasoned background in business growth, managing top-grade operations and network infrastructure within IT / Ops, and has led Products & Marketing as a VP at App Help by App Direct. The team also includes advisors Rusty Russell + Dr. Adam Back and Calle BTC.

Cloaked Services aims to revolutionize telecommunications by decentralizing it with its privacy-first approach. As the parent company of Cloaked Wireless, the company is building in what we see as the future of secure, private, and censorship-resistant telecommunications, starting with its live privacy-first MVNO and the upcoming Cloaked Network.

Slice: If you’ve been waiting for a standout deal, this is it. Don’t miss the chance to check it out and snag your Slice of the action.

Slice has two amazing products! Slice is a browser extension that rewards users for their eyeballs. Think of it like Brave Browser… except you don’t need to change browsers, and there is no shitcoin! Check out Slice and install it alongside your adblocker to start stacking sats in the browser.

Their other product, Ask Void, is a super cool customizable browser homepage with built-in AI search. It’s incredibly addictive, and the widgets on their roadmap are incredible. Once you switch to Void as your browser homepage, there is no going back!

Redefining the $455 billion digital advertising space. Slice rewards users for ad engagement and offers a customizable AI-powered search experience. They’re making advertising user-centric in a way no one else has dared. Check out the Slice investment below 👇

Ready to Raise? Let’s Make It Happen.

If you’re a founder who is building on Bitcoin, are you ready to level up? At Lightning Ventures, we work with the best builders in the space, helping them connect with investors who share their passion on all things Bitcoin. Whether you’re developing on Lightning, exploring Taproot Assets, or crafting the next-generation Bitcoin product, we want to hear from you.

Applying is easy — just fill out this form and tell us what you’re working on. We’re here to support bold ideas, spark big conversations, and help you find the right backers to fuel your vision. Let’s build the future together.

For the complete list of amazing companies and jobs in Bitcoin, be sure to keep an eye on Bitcoiner Jobs.