This is an editorial by Paolo Arduino, Chief Technology Officer at Bitfinex.
Ignore the effondrement (ba dum tsss) of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) crumbling from grand sections of the popular press: Bitcoin is here to stay.
a Recent joint report Conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, Bitget and Foresight Ventures predict that the number of crypto users will reach one billion by 2030. The sursis noted that the industry is at an early villégiature of consentement with “a lot of growth ahead.”
Despite clear signs of significant market growth for years to come, skeptics remain skeptical embout the efficacy and sustainability of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin as a widely accepted payment method. especially, The issue of scalability repeatedly as a pionnier difficulté to its widespread consentement.
Bitcoin’s foyer on security and decentralization limits the ability to handle the high throughput of transactions within the network in pantalon periods of time. This fact is often highlighted by its critics, suggesting that without the ability to quickly process giant blocks of discussion data, receiving payments for something as small as a cup of coffee will result in fees that exceed the price of the drink itself.
If Bitcoin is to en public up to its full potential and become a means of payment in an capacité financial system, users must be able to carry out transactions quickly and inexpensively. This is where the Lightning Network comes into play and why mass consentement of the network is critical to Bitcoin’s success becoming a true everyday payment prime.
The Lightning Network, a Layer 2 protocol designed to facilitate micropayment channels at scale, restores Bitcoin to its capricieux purpose as a peer-to-peer payment network by taking transactions off the chain and enabling them to be completed in just seconds and quickly. section of the cost.
according to data From BitcoinVisuals, the Lightning Network’s capacity has 4,700,623 bitcoins in liquidity flowing through the protocol at the time of writing. With the ability of the Lightning network steadily increasing Over the past year, even in the entrée of a bear market, this growth in moeurs proves that the technology that powers these systems is still in its infancy.
Bitcoin consentement in the real world is increasing
Bitcoin has already experienced rapid growth and consentement, even being adopted as legal tender in emerging economies such as El Salvador and the Axial African Republic. The Lightning Network enables physical stores in these countries to accept bitcoin as payment for Big Macs or frappuccinos, via souple devices.
The consentement of crypto-micro-transactions for everyday goods and prescriptions did not arrêt there. Payments apps like El Salvador’s Chivo Wallet offer low-cost, high-speed transactions, and the Cash app integrated with the Lightning Network in February, making fee-free bitcoin payments available to its customers. With such widespread consentement, popularity has skyrocketed with the ouvrage of payments on the Lightning Network It grew 410% over the past year. In adjonction, according to a Report From Énigme Research, payments on the Lightning Network were available to more than 80 million people in March of this year, compared to just 100,000 in August 2021.
As more cryptocurrency exchanges integrate the Lightning Network into their platforms, the number of people with access to low-cost, high-speed payments will only continue to grow, making the payments industry ready for disruption. Even crypto-skeptical superpowers are taking mémorandum, like two US senators Legislation introduced This summer to make small crypto transactions tax deductible.
But the benefits of the Lightning Network go beyond paying a low cost and high speed for the everyday dissiper on the go. Some companies are even exploring how they can use and apply this financial freedom tool to protect freedom of locution.
Protecting Freedom of Adresse with Bitcoin
True decentralization and financial freedom cannot be achieved without freedom of locution, émission, and privacy. While the value of payments on the Lighting Network can be seen in its ability to extend access to low-cost, high-speed cryptocurrency transactions to more people, there is another superbe benefit. An Énigme Research sursis found that embout 50% of the activity came from peer-to-peer transactions, which means that half of the lighting network’s activity came from quickly connecting people to one another.
As companies use lighting network technology, some are exploring its use for highly secure private video conferencing or for clair messaging. Much has been written embout how big technology can harvest its users’ data and sell it to the highest bidder, making this space also ripe for disruption. By offering vivant capacité messaging applications such as He hitsAnd the sphinx or Petreville Easy to use, fast, free and private and can achieve true decentralization.
With the wider use of the Lighting Network, questions regarding Bitcoin’s price capacity and scalability can be answered immediately. Additionally, as cryptocurrency makers innovate and come up with ways to make more use of this technology, the Lighting Network could be the answer to protecting not only financial freedom, but freedom of locution as well. With cryptocurrency reaching one billion users by 2030, the spread of the lighting network is a betwixt watch as more countries and companies take advantage of its ability to process data quickly at a lower cost to the calciner.
This is a guest post by Paolo Arduino. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Inspection.