Galoy
Galoy is a financial software company founded in 2019 that develops open-source infrastructure for Bitcoin banking. The company provides tools, APIs, and platforms that enable communities, businesses, and financial institutions to offer services on the Bitcoin and Lightning Network. Galoy's long-term objective is to offer open-source alternatives to the traditional, closed-system core banking software that dominates the financial industry. [1]
Overview
Founded by Nicolas Burtey in September 2019, Galoy was established with the initial goal of enabling traditional banks to integrate and utilize Bitcoin. The company's mission is based on the premise that Bitcoin will become a standard for "Money over IP" (MOIP) and a widely used medium of exchange. Due to an unfavorable regulatory environment in its early years, the company pivoted to developing tools for community-based Bitcoin circular economies, which led to the creation of the Bitcoin Beach Wallet.
After the wallet gained global traction and was rebranded as Blink, Galoy shifted its focus back to its original mission of serving financial institutions. In early 2025, the company sold the Blink wallet to concentrate on its business-to-business (B2B) offerings, culminating in the launch of its flagship product, Lana, a platform for bitcoin-backed loans. The company's product suite is designed to be modular, allowing institutions to integrate components for payments, accounting, and lending. Galoy is ISO 27001 certified, demonstrating compliance with international standards for information security management.
The company's name, "Galoy," is inspired by the Gauls, ancient Celtic tribes known for their decentralized structure and resistance to the Roman Empire. This is a reference to the comic series Asterix the Gaul, symbolizing the Bitcoin community's resilience against established financial systems. [2] [3]
Products
Lana
Lana is a subscription-based lending software platform that enables banks and financial institutions to offer loans collateralized by bitcoin. It is designed for institutions whose clients hold bitcoin and want to borrow against their assets without selling them and triggering capital gains taxes. The platform leverages bitcoin's liquidity, allowing lenders to liquidate collateral with minimal slippage if a loan's health deteriorates.
Lana provides banks with a dashboard to monitor the risk of volatile collateral and manage liquidation levels, while the bank retains control over loan terms, such as interest rates and duration. The software is custody-agnostic, meaning it can integrate with a bank's chosen third-party custodian (such as BitGo or Fireblocks) or with an in-house solution using Galoy's Bria software. It also includes reporting and audit features to help institutions meet regulatory requirements. Lana is released under a "fair-source" license, where its code is publicly available for review but becomes fully open-source after a two-year delay to allow Galoy to monetize its deployment. [2] [8]
Bria
Bria is an enterprise-grade, self-hosted software solution that functions as a payments hub for managing Bitcoin transactions across both on-chain and the Lightning Network. It is designed for institutions that need to securely and scalably handle functions like payment receipt, internal transfers, and customer digital asset accounts. The system optimizes liquidity by batching transactions and managing Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs). It supports the configuration of multiple wallets within a single account and accommodates various signing methods, including Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs). Bria is built for scalable, cloud-based environments and includes features such as payout queues, metadata tagging, and event streaming for operational consistency. It also incorporates a bookkeeping framework aligned with standard accounting principles and employs security practices like automated testing and encrypted credential storage. [7]
Cala
Cala is an open-source, double-entry core accounting ledger designed for building modern financial applications that use Bitcoin, either exclusively or in combination with other assets like fiat currencies. It serves as a foundational layer for new digital asset products, providing an alternative to legacy core banking infrastructure. The platform provides APIs for transaction processing, event tracking, and multi-asset financial operations. Its modular design allows for customization and expansion, enabling developers to add new features as needed. Cala is engineered for enterprise-scale payments and high availability. It currently supports Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, with planned integrations for traditional networks like SWIFT and for loan services. [9] [10]
Stablesats
Stablesats is a system that enables users to hold and transact in a value pegged to the U.S. dollar while operating entirely within the Bitcoin and Lightning Network ecosystem. It creates synthetic dollar balances by using bitcoin derivatives—specifically, perpetual inverse swaps—to hedge against Bitcoin's price volatility. This provides users with a stable unit of account without relying on traditional stablecoins or fiat banking integrations. Because the underlying asset remains bitcoin, all transactions are fully interoperable with any standard Lightning wallet, avoiding the need to issue a separate token. The system is fully collateralized with bitcoin. The Stablesats model carries several risks, including counterparty risk with the derivatives exchange, auto-deleveraging risk during high market volatility, funding rate risk, and regulatory risk associated with the use of derivatives. [11]
Former Products
Blink Wallet
Blink is a custodial Lightning wallet designed for everyday Bitcoin payments. It was developed by Galoy and originally launched in 2020 as the Bitcoin Beach Wallet to support the circular economy in El Zonte, El Salvador. The wallet was created as a proof of concept for Galoy's open-source banking platform and was aimed at new users, merchants, and communities.
Key features of the wallet included support for both bitcoin and synthetic dollar balances through Stablesats, low fees, multilingual support, and built-in educational resources where users could earn satoshis for completing quizzes. It also offered merchant tools such as a web-based point-of-sale app, printable QR codes (LNURL), and a Lightning Address for every user. The wallet was adopted by numerous Bitcoin community projects worldwide. [4] [12]
In early 2025, Galoy sold the Blink wallet to another entity to focus on its B2B strategy and the launch of its Lana platform. [2]
Funding
In December 2021, Galoy closed a $3 million seed funding round. The round was led by Craft Ventures, with participation from Kingsway Capital, Fulgur Ventures, and Bitcoiner Ventures. Angel investors included Vijay Boyapati and Brad Mills. The capital was raised to expand Galoy's Bitcoin banking software and infrastructure for communities and institutions. Investors cited the company's role in enabling Bitcoin-based payments and its successful implementation in El Salvador as a key proof of concept. [5]