Lastbit, founded in Bangalore, India in 2018 and now HQ’d out of Berkeley, CA is a technology company that produces ways for consumers to use Bitcoin on the Lightning Network. Founded by Prashanth Balasubramanian and Bernardo Magnani Blanco, Lastbit was built to provide a tool for instant global payments in fiat or in Bitcoin with low fees. Lastbit connects with various bitcoin exchanges from around the world and provides a platform for movement of funds instantly between various currencies, providing near instantaneous global transactions for end users. 

Made by Bitcoin-ers for the real world, Lastbit today provides a simple user experience for anyone that wants to interact with the bitcoin network via traditional payment instruments such as IBANs and MasterCard debit cards. Lastbit has secured their growth into the future in 2020 when they announced that they have been enrolled in the Visa Fast Track Program and been funded by YCombinator, UC Berkeley, and Fulgur Ventures among others. Lastbit is in public beta currently offering access to their mobile applications Lastbit lite and Lastbit cards. 

As the Bitcoin community continues to grow around the world, it is important that teams like Lastbit can provide a smooth on-ramp to consumers on the Lightning Network. We at OpenNode believe that Lastbit will be an essential tool for the everyday consumer to use Bitcoin and we’re pleased to give them the spotlight for using our API to handle Lightning Network transactions. 

“As a small team with limited resources, OpenNode solved point for point exactly the problems we had – The risk of running a lightning node on a public cloud and getting our instances suspended for “mining”, the risk of running in-house servers in a country with erratic electricity and most importantly – ensuring 100% uptime and a clean, straightforward API service to plug into with a simple control dashboard. Outside of the documentation, the OpenNode team was extremely generous and helpful in answering individual questions even at a stage where they are servicing thousands of merchants.”

Prashanth Balasubramanian, Lastbit CEO & Co-founder

We at OpenNode are happy to be providing our API to Lastbit to create the infrastructure for their Bitcoin Lightning Network wallet. Our goal is to continue to spread Bitcoin adoption all around the world and with this partnership we can reach our goal much quicker.

Are you interested in partnering with OpenNode or using our technology to create new applications powered by the Bitcoin Lightning Network? Contact us and let us know how we can help, we’ll be happy to hear from you!