Exchange · custodial-bitcoin-only

River

What it is. A US Bitcoin-only financial-services company — buy, sell, hold, and (for some products) Lightning send/receive. No altcoins. Oriented toward serious accumulation and institutional/business accounts as well as retail.

What it bridges. Fiat (US bank, wire) ↔ BTC. On-chain and, for supported flows, Lightning.

Agent access — important nuance. River’s public developer API is River Lightning Services (RLS) — a Lightning payments API: send/receive over Lightning, on-chain deposit addresses, Lightning withdrawals (on-chain withdrawals via the dashboard only). It is not a buy/sell trading API — programmatic fiat→BTC conversion is not publicly exposed. So an agent can receive, hold, and pay over Lightning through River, but cannot programmatically buy BTC with fiat the way Strike/Coinbase/Kraken allow.

How an agent uses it. Best as a Lightning payments + deposit rail (RLS — it powers El Salvador’s Chivo backend), or for reserve accumulation via owner-initiated buys. Not a programmatic fiat↔BTC trading venue.

Coverage. United States–focused; state-level availability varies — see the venue.

Dependencies & payment. A KYC’d US River account; programmatic access is River Lightning Services (RLS, a Lightning payments API), not a buy/sell trading API. Fund via US bank/wire; receive, hold, and pay over Lightning; fiat→BTC buys are owner-initiated, not programmatic.

Gotchas. Custodial and US-regulated — KYC at onboarding, account-level freeze surface until withdrawal to self-custody. US bank rails mean fiat-leg latency (ACH/wire) on the fiat side.

Links. river.com · RLS API docs.