Blockstream Corporation Inc. said today it has closed a $210 million funding round that values the Canadian bitcoin infrastructure outfit at $3.2 billion.

The Series B round was led by U.K.-based investment management company Baillie Gifford and Hong Kong-based iFinex Inc., the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.

Blockstream also announced that it has acquired the intellectual property and core employees of Spondoolies Ltd., an Israeli bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer. The company did not disclose the terms of the deal.

The Spondoolies team will join Blockstream to build the company’s arm building ASICs, which are application-specific integrated circuits needed to create the mining hardware for bitcoin mining. Launched in 2013, Spondoolies has designed and launched five different cryptocurrency mining products.

Blockstream will use the cash infusion to build out its bitcoin and cryptocurrency-related services. For example, the recently launched Blockstream Energy service, which allows power producers to sell excess energy to bitcoin mining operations and Blockstream Satellite, which broadcasts the bitcoin ledger from space.

The new capital will also be used to scale the company’s bitcoin-focused financial products and its Liquid Network sidechain, which operates alongside the bitcoin network in order to enhance its functionality. The company claims it enables faster, more confidential bitcoin transactions.

Baillie Gifford Investment Manager Allen Farrington will be joining Blockstream as a board observer.

“I am convinced of the potential of tokenized securities on the Liquid Network to be transformative for the architecture of capital markets,” Farrington said. “Bitcoin-based development and Blockstream’s asset issuance and management platforms can contribute to meaningfully decentralizing financial infrastructure, democratizing control over investment products, and firmly embedding openness and programmability in capital markets.”

Since the launch of the Liquid Network in 2018, Blockstream says that it has amassed more than $1.1 billion in network value and has “seen impressive ecosystem growth” on its sidechain.

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