Chicago-based Strike, a bitcoin payment service that uses the Lightning network for faster transactions, raised an $80M Series B led by Ten31
Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Wyoming were among the investors in the Series B funding round.
Context & Ripple Effects
Strike's $80M Series B caps a year in which the company turned protocol plumbing into distribution: months earlier it had shipped a Shopify integration letting US merchants opt into Lightning payments at checkout. The raise also extends a funding arc that began with Lightning Labs' $2.5M round in 2018 and its $10M Series A in 2020 — evidence that the Lightning stack has moved from developer bet to venture-scale business.
First-order effects
- Strike gets the balance sheet to push beyond its existing US, El Salvador, and Argentina footprint toward the 65-country expansion it later announced, while doubling down on the regulation-first US posture it says it is taking.
- Ten31 leading the round, with Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Wyoming participating, puts university endowment money directly into bitcoin payment infrastructure — a new investor class for Lightning.
Second-order effects
- Competing exchanges can no longer treat Lightning as experimental: Coinbase's later move to add Lightning support via Lightspark shows the network being adopted by the largest US venue, compressing Strike's speed-and-cost advantage into table stakes.
- Merchant-side, the Shopify integration plus funded expansion pressures other commerce platforms to offer native bitcoin checkout or cede that payment option to rivals' rails.
Third-order effects
- If endowments keep allocating to crypto infrastructure rather than just holding bitcoin, Lightning payments could consolidate around a few well-capitalized, compliance-oriented operators — with regulators dealing with fewer, more legible counterparties than the early retail-node era.
The trend: Bitcoin's Lightning Network is shifting from hobbyist protocol to institutionally funded payment rail, with regulated players like Strike and exchange integrations pulling it into mainstream commerce.