Ego Loss of life Capital’s portfolio reveals adoption metrics together with $1.5 billion in Lightning-powered buying and selling quantity, as Block shocks the business with their 9.7% Lightning Community yield.
Whereas bitcoin treasury firms, debates about market construction payments, and strategic bitcoin reserve advocacy dominate the headlines in 2025, a development is quietly rising within the background: the success of Bitcoin know-how firms.
More and more acknowledged as digital gold and a long-term retailer of worth, bitcoin is way over only a shiny rock in our on-line world. As a software program know-how, Bitcoin is programmable and has unlocked a brand new paradigm of funds, custody, settlement and buying and selling potentialities.
Nonetheless, some critics level to the empty blocks on the Bitcoin base layer and traditionally low transaction charges as implicit proof that Bitcoin is failing as a medium of trade. Others declare that the Lightning Community has did not get mainstream adoption and even argue that it suffers from vital privateness issues. However the reverse could also be true.
New knowledge popping out of assorted firms all through the business is beginning to paint a unique image. Maybe the Lightning Community has been so profitable in drawing transactions off chain and making them extra non-public that it’s exhausting to quantify success metrics with out firms concerned sharing the info.
However, quite a lot of Bitcoin start-ups and firms utilizing bitcoin to construct out new monetary infrastructure are actually beginning to boast of their success metrics, claiming numbers that counsel there’s a robust product market match past treasury methods.
Jeff Sales space, writer of The Value Of Tomorrow and co-founder of the Bitcoin-focused VC agency Ego Loss of life Capital, informed Bitcoin Journal he doesn’t “think the general public has any clue with how fast the Bitcoin ecosystem is growing.” Including that, “They keep on hearing treasury companies this and politics that, and they’re missing the forest for the trees.”
Under follows a abstract of assorted firms and tasks demonstrating Bitcoin adoption in vital numbers, lots of them inside the Ego Loss of life Capital portfolio.
Block: Incomes Huge on Lightning and Bitcoin Funds
The distinction in views between the digital gold thesis and those who imagine in Bitcoin as a funds know-how was most not too long ago seen at Bitcoin Vegas 2025 the place Block, the dad or mum firm of Money App, disclosed that they’re incomes 9.7% yield off their Bitcoin Lightning node.
Miles Suter, Bitcoin Product Lead at Block, informed the reside viewers that “at the infrastructure layer, we’re earning nearly 10% bitcoin-on-bitcoin returns by efficiently routing real payments across the Lightning network. This isn’t yield from altcoin staking or reckless speculation; it’s from solving hard, real-time routing problems, and its real bitcoin-on-bitcoin returns from our corporate holdings via supporting real payments use cases.”
Moreover Block’s beautiful 9.7% determine announcement, which stood out as some of the lasting impressions from the convention, Suter claimed that Money App ranks “among the top bitcoin on-ramps in the U.S., accounting for nearly 10% of on-chain block space at any time,” including that in 2024, its Lightning utilization grew 7x and one in 4 of their outbound Bitcoin funds are processed on Lightning. These numbers spotlight Block’s progress as a Bitcoin funds large, now maybe the commonest service provider funds terminal and client funds app that integrates bitcoin.
Ego Loss of life Capital
Ego Loss of life Capital has been investing in Bitcoin infrastructure start-ups since 2022, initially elevating a tactical 30 million greenback fund amid a growth in crypto and altcoin VC investments.
“When we first raised money, we actually targeted 30 million because the ecosystem at that time was really early. We realized we had to lean into these companies to help them scale. There were a lot of big crypto funds at that time, but they were spraying money everywhere else. And it was largely the exact opposite of what we believed would happen on Bitcoin.” Sales space recalled that “Bitcoin was a protocol. It was developing in layers and it was early. And if you realized that and leaned in to help those companies that were developing in the layers, helping the infrastructure be created, then you would accelerate that. You would accelerate what we saw Bitcoin being, a currency, a store of value, an entirely new network.”
“We don’t have a failure in that fund,” Sales space mentioned of the agency’s first funding cohort, which included firms like Breez, Relai, LN Markets, Fedi, Wolf and Easy Proof. “That fund is just over three years old. It’s staggering. A number of those companies, I think three of those companies are already profitable — and profitable in bitcoin terms. So adding bitcoin to their treasury each month and growing incredibly fast.”
Breez: Powering a World Lightning Funds Community
Breez, based in 2018, is a self-custodial Lightning-as-a-service supplier that allows builders to combine Bitcoin funds into apps utilizing its open supply Breez SDK. By simplifying Lightning’s complexities, Breez has been driving widespread adoption throughout various industries.
“Over 40 apps have already implemented our SDK in production or beta since we launched it less than 18 months ago. Collectively, ~1.5 million users now have access to self-custodial, peer-to-peer bitcoin payments through these apps. These apps processed over $4.5 million in gross transaction volume in 2024,” wrote Roy Sheinfeld, CEO of Breez, in a January 2025 weblog put up.
The “Bitcoin Payments Report” by Breez and 1A1z, launched February 2025, added, “The Lightning Network now reaches over 650 million users; driven by integrations with mainstream products, new developer tools, and growing merchant adoption.” A month later Sheinfeld revealed that “Lightning Pay’s user base has been growing with users moving a billion sats monthly.” Moreover, Breez’s integration with Klever Pockets introduced Lightning to “100,000 monthly active users,” as acknowledged in a December, 2024, weblog put up.
LN Markets: Lightning-Fueled Buying and selling Takes Off
LN Markets, launched in 2020, is a Bitcoin-native derivatives buying and selling platform, leveraging the Lightning Community for fast settlements and minimized counterparty threat.
Its Lightning-native login interface demonstrates they’re on the chopping fringe of Bitcoin applied sciences and unlocks consumer expertise options that differentiate it from most different superior buying and selling platforms. The quick fee rails that end result from this deep integration with the Lightning Community unlock sooner settlement, decrease withdrawal charges and gives entry to smaller merchants all through the third world, with many customers in South America in international locations like Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.
“Basically we’ve gone from 50 million in monthly trading volume to 1.5 billion last month in May,” co-founder Romain Rouphael informed Bitcoin Journal, including that they’ve gone from “one billion dollar yearly trading volume in 2023 to six billion last year to 12 billion this year.” Profitability can also be robust, with Romain stating, “We double our revenue each year and we double our EBITDA as well every year,” and “We are doing millions of Lightning transactions every year” These figures spotlight LN Markets’ robust and lively consumer base in addition to Lightning’s scalability.
The trade focuses on Bitcoin derivatives like a perpetual futures contract and an choices platform, traded towards an artificial greenback that when settled is paid out in Bitcoin.
Relai: Europe’s Bitcoin Neobank
Relai, a Swiss-based cell app based in 2020, streamlines bitcoin adoption for Europeans with a user-friendly, noncustodial pockets and brokerage service. Focusing on newcomers, it emphasizes dollar-cost averaging and self-custody, making bitcoin financial savings accessible.
Julian Liniger, co-founder of Relai, informed Bitcoin Journal “we are now exactly five years into the market. We started in the summer 2020, today we are roughly 50 full-time employees, we have raised around 20 million U.S. dollars, we have more than 500 thousand app downloads across Europe, and around 150,000 active users.” He added that, “Last year we did around half a billion of trading volume.”
Liniger says they anticipate to attain round one billion in buying and selling quantity in 2025 and “eight digits” in income.
Madeira: A Bitcoin Financial system in Motion
The Madeira Bitcoin undertaking, launched on the scenic island, seeks to ascertain a thriving Bitcoin-native economic system, drawing inspiration from Bitcoin Seaside in El Salvador. Initiated with the assist of Jeff Sales space and Madeira’s president Miguel Albuquerque, the undertaking has adopted a bottom-up technique, encouraging retailers to simply accept Bitcoin through the Lightning Community for quick, low-cost transactions and the associated advertising upside. This strategy capitalizes on Madeira’s tourism-driven economic system, the place Bitcoin’s effectivity outshines fiat methods, doubtlessly driving natural progress.
“So, we went on Madeira and when we did the conference – in 2023” Sales space recalled of the initiative, “ It took me a year to get 32 companies to accept Bitcoin. We were pretty proud of having 32 companies onboard. Fast forward a year, I think it’s over 250 companies accepting Lightning in Madeira. You can live in a totally full circular economy in Madeira today.” Organizations like FREE Madeira assist companies onboard Bitcoin and keep a BTCMap that whereas in all probability incomplete, provides you a way of the adoption, boasting 150 lively Bitcoin retailers within the small European island.
Initiatives like Sovereign Engineering, a Bitcoin centric occasion for builders and entrepreneurs to improve their talent units and community add to the attraction of the island, placing it on the map for top tech builders and entrepreneurs. The regulatory surroundings in Madeira additionally welcomes innovation, as a particular financial area inside the euro zone, a growth which Sales space says “it’s wildly exciting.”
