Bitcoin (BTC) investment company New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) has confirmed the acquisition of Bottlepay, a United Kingdom-based micropayment service, for an estimated fee of around $280 million to $300 million.
The former Goldman Sachs partner NYDIG participated in Bottlepay’s seed funding round that happened in March 2021. NYDIG previously participated in the firm’s $15.4-million seed funding round in February 2021. This funding round was spearheaded by British billionaire investor Alan Howard, which saw the firm valued at more than $50 million.
Bottlepay’s mobile application service uses the Bitcoin Lightning Network enabling users in the United Kingdom and Europe to transfer small amounts, known as micropayments, of Bitcoin and traditional fiat currencies like the euro and sterling pound.
In March 2021, after the previous integrations of Reddit and Discord, the digital application unveiled the integration of BTC payments into the social network platform Twitter, enabling the account holders to send the asset with just a simple format “@bottlepay send 1,000 sats to @twitteruser.”
Pete Cheyne, Bottlepayfounder, shared his optimism on the future of the payments service after the purchase of NYDIG:
Buy Bitcoin Now“When we set out to build Bottlepay, we wanted to unlock the financial infrastructure of the future. We’re excited to be joining an industry leader like NYDIG who shares our vision for the future of money.”
Bottlepay And NYDIG Executives Speak Out
Bottlepay stopped its operations in late 2019 after the introduction of new Anti-Money Laundering regulations in the EU, with its United Kingdom-based developer, Block Matrix, saying that the strict law jeorpardized the privacy and identity of the community and thus declined to continue working on the project.
After this sage, Bottlepay overhauled the core network of its Bitcoin wallet to comply with the EU’s 5th Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Directive, which is an initiative aimed to boost the transparency of digital transactions throughout Europe.
The founder and executive chairman of NYDIG, Ross Stevens, and co-founder and CEO of NYDIG, Robert Gutmann, shared in a joint statement on the regulatory credibility they witnessed in the Bottlepay service:
“The Bottlepay team has built world-class infrastructure for Lightning and bitcoin payments, and they have done so with the same level of regulatory and compliance rigor that our customers expect from NYDIG today. NYDIG is on a mission to bring bitcoin to all, and this acquisition brings us one step closer to fulfilling that goal.”
