Every wave of fintech needs a layer of regulated plumbing underneath it. For Bitcoin and crypto in Europe, Lastbit was building exactly that. Founded in 2018 in Tallinn by Prashanth Balasubramanian, the company set out to give fintechs a single API stack covering the regulated services they needed most: IBAN accounts, crypto custody, and card issuing — all wrapped in a compliant European framework.

The product matured into a B2B platform that let any developer team launch a regulated crypto-banking experience in weeks instead of years. Behind a clean API, customers could spin up euro IBANs, hold and move Bitcoin and stablecoins, and issue debit cards to end users. The company later rebranded to Striga, sharpening its focus on the embedded crypto-banking opportunity in Europe.

This was the Fulgur thesis applied to infrastructure. The fastest path to mainstream Bitcoin usage is not always a new consumer wallet — it is often a regulated API that lets a hundred other consumer products plug Bitcoin in natively. By owning the licensed layer between banks and apps, Striga made Bitcoin a default option in European fintech rather than a bolt-on.

The journey concluded with one of the strongest outcomes of our portfolio. In October 2025, Striga was acquired by Lightspark, joining one of the most ambitious Lightning-native companies in the industry. The combination pairs Striga's regulated European stack with Lightspark's Lightning infrastructure, accelerating exactly the kind of integration we have always believed Bitcoin needs.

We were partnered with Lastbit from 2019 and are proud of what Prashanth and the team built. The exit is a milestone for the company, the Lightning ecosystem, and our thesis on regulated Bitcoin infrastructure.