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- Seetee is created to focus on Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market and has invested NOK 500 million into BTC.
- The company partnered with Adam Back’s Blockstream.
The Norwegian giant Aker has created a company focused on cryptocurrencies called Seetee. Through this entity, the company has made a $58 million or 500 million NOK investment in Bitcoin. The company’s plans are long-term as they plan to continue to “significantly” increase their funding in BTC.
Founded in 1841, Aker is an industrial investment company with holdings in key areas such as renewable energy, oil and gas, “green” technologies, maritime assets, marine biotechnology, software, among others. The company and its subsidiaries employ more than 37,000 people globally and have posted annual revenues of up to $9 billion.
According to a letter presented by the company’s main shareholder, Kjell Inge Røkke, in collaboration with Ola Snøve, Seetee’s chairman with a 10% stake in the crypto company, 1,170 BTC has been poured into Seetee’s treasury. In addition, the investors have stated their intention to be “more progressive than most established companies” but not as “rebellious as the cypherpunks” who invented BTC.
The company runs an open-source Bitcoin payment server and has set out to be “active community contributors.” In addition, they will set up mining operations to convert energy from various renewable sources (wind, solar, hydroelectric, among others) into “economic assets that can be used anywhere.” Røkke states in his letter:
Bitcoin is in our eyes, a load-balancing economic battery, and batteries are essential to the energy transition required to reach the targets of the Paris Agreement. Our ambition is to be a valuable partner in new renewable projects.
Bitcoin at the center of a new monetary system
In parallel with the aforementioned objectives, Seetee will invest in projects and companies within the Bitcoin ecosystem. Specifically, Røkke has disclosed his interest in micropayments and innovations that will enable users to leverage use cases without passwords, usernames, or personal information that can be monetized without their knowledge.
Seetee will help its parent company, Aker, keep up with new opportunities and the new landscape that, according to the principal shareholder, will “define” the next decade “as the internet has” since the 90s. Røkke confesses that the idea of founding Seetee has been derived from the influence of personalities with positions for and against Bitcoin such as Chamath Palihapitiya, Anthony Pompliano, Nic Carter, Jack Mallers, Lacy Hunt, Michael Saylor, Elisabeth Stark, Erik Townsend, among others.
Røkke was also proud to be able to reveal the startup’s first cooperation with Blockstream, the company founded by Adam Back. Through this cooperation, Seetee intends to “navigate the industry”.
His letter also makes reference to the policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Thus, Aker seeks to diversify in order to evade “the risk” associated with the USD:
Bitcoin may still go to zero. But it can also become the core of a new monetary architecture. If so, one bitcoin may be worth millions of dollars. The asymmetry is interesting to a portfolio. People who know the most about bitcoin believe its future success is nearly inevitable. Whereas the other camp thinks that its failure is equally certain. Status quo is not possible.
