Cryptocurrency payment gateway CoinGate is launching a pilot program for 100 merchants to test transactions on a Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) variant of their service, according to news shared with Cointelegraph today, July 10 According to CoinGate’s blog post, the merchants taking part in the LN trial include esports betting websites, online stores with crypto merchandise, servers and hosting services, and adult entertainment websites. The post notes that Lightning Network payments “will be” available starting on July 1. The Lightning Network is a second layer solution to the problems with scalability for the Bitcoin (BTC) network that works by keeping …

It's no secret that most mainstream economists don't think too highly of cryptocurrencies. Not only have Bitcoin, Ethereum and the rest produced the "greatest bubble in history," but they're "neither a serious method of payment nor a good way to store capital" — at least according to the Bank of America and Nouriel "Dr Doom" Roubini, respectively. However, while traditional financial experts have spent countless hours complaining that the volatility of cryptocurrencies renders them unviable as actual currency, it is possible to use them as money in a wide variety of places and to spend them on everything from pizzas …

On June 28, news emerged that a study, conducted by Diar, suggested that the Lightning Network, which is being heralded as a potential way for Bitcoin to scale, is not as effective at routing payments than was first believed. The study’s overall claim was that “the reliability of successfully routing a payment on the Lightning Network is still quite low,” especially when it came to larger amounts. However, experts in the know — including Bitcoin core developer Jonas Schnelli and core development contributor, Peter Todd, as well as the co-founder of Lightning Labs, Elizabeth Stark — have all slammed this …

A study conducted by Diar has revealed that “the reliability of successfully routing a payment on the Lightning Network is still quite low.” Diar provides analysis of significant developments within the global digital currency industry. The Lightning Network (LN) is the second layer payment protocol designed to solve the problem of Bitcoin (BTC) scalability. The LN purportedly allows for almost instant, low-cost, and scalable transactions between two parties. Though the LN protocol was very well accepted by the crypto community after its release in January of this year, the study suggests that the protocol stumbles when processing large amounts. According …

Portuguese software engineer João Almeida has created ‘Poketoshi,’ a platform that allows users to play Nintendo’s popular Pokémon game on the Lightning Network (LN), The Next Web reports today, June 19. pic.twitter.com/8KzX6LYX04 — João Almeida (@joaodealmeida94) June 19, 2018 Lightning Network is a second-layer solution to Bitcoin’s scalability limitations, opening payment channels between users that keep the majority of transactions off-chain, turning to the underlying blockchain only to record the net results. Almeida’s Poketoshi uses LN together with the live streaming video platform Twitch, which allows users to interact with the game via an online chat room - as in …

You may think that you have never heard of Laszlo Hanyecz, a Florida-based programmer working for online retail company GoRuck, but you’d probably be wrong — Hanyecz was behind the inspirational purchase of two pizzas from Papa John’s for 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) back on May 22, 2010, making this week a celebration of Pizza Day’s eight year anniversary. But the transaction did not involve only one person: Jeremy Sturdivant, also known as Jercos, participated in the original Bitcoin pizza deal as the recipient of those 10,000 BTC that he turned into two pizzas. Ever since the fateful first-ever recorded transaction …

Economist Alex de Vries, who published an article on “Bitcoin’s Growing Energy Problem,” yesterday, May 16, in scientific journal Joule, told the Independent that Bitcoin (BTC) mining will use 0.5 percent of the world’s energy by 2018. De Vries concludes that as the BTC network currently consumes about 2.55 GW of electricity and moves towards consuming 7.67 GW in the future (for reference, Ireland consumes 3.1 GW and Austria 8.2 GW), the network “has a big problem, and it is growing fast.” However, he does note that solutions like the Lightning Network “may alleviate the situation.” Bitcoin mining requires energy …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) blockchain hit a unique milestone in April as the 17 millionth BTC was mined. If you’re wondering why this number is significant, it’s because there are only four mln tokens left to mine before the 21 mln BTC cap is reached. However, the truth is that most people alive today are unlikely to see that happen. Bitcoin’s blockchain protocol makes mining more difficult as more miners join the pool, and the Bitcoin reward for mining a block also halves every 210,000 blocks. As it stands, miners receive a 12.5 BTC reward for unlocking a new block. According to …

The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Cointelegraph.com. For an economy that emphasizes decentralization, cryptocurrency has ironically relied primarily on centralized platforms of exchange. This is problematic as they often hold funds in giant “honeypot” addresses that attract sophisticated attackers. This has resulted in several cases where exchange funds have been drained. In fact, there were two in the past 3 months alone! Bitgrail reported on Feb.12 that over $170 mln in XRB was stolen from their wallets. Coincheck suffered one of the largest losses ever with over $400 mln in …

CEO of Lightning Labs, the developer of the Lightning Blockchain scalability protocol, Elizabeth Stark has spoken out to challenge the Wall Street and traditional financial sector narrative that puts its faith in Blockchain, not Bitcoin, to deliver on the radical promises of the crypto phenomenon, Yahoo Finance reported April 5. “When we first pitched my company Lightning Labs, we actually took the word ‘Bitcoin’ out of our deck and our marketing material because it was so much about Blockchain. Now, I feel like we’ve entered into a ‘Bitcoin, not Blockchain’ world, where people understand the value of cryptocurrency technology and …

Exchange and wallet service Coinbase and its professional trading platform Global Digital Asset Exchange GDAX both announced they had implemented Segregated Witness (SegWit) support for Bitcoin transactions in blog posts published Friday, Feb. 23. In their blog pos, GDAX characterizes SegWit technology as “a critical step forward in the development of Bitcoin” and promises support for SegWit transactions will be made available to 100% of their customers “over the coming days”. Coinbase also said they would be rolling out support for all customers over the next week. SegWit technology is designed to reduce transactions times and fees on the Bitcoin …

What is this all about? Blockchains are slow. And therefore, expensive. If I had to send you some Bitcoins, you’d receive them in about a couple of hours and I’d have paid a heavy transaction fee too. With such a reputation, how will Blockchains take over the world? Any idea that can solve the non-scalability of Blockchains is worth attention, time and effort. Lightning Network is one such idea. But before we understand the solution, we’ll need to understand the problem. If you’re already aware of the problem, you can directly jump to the next section. Why Blockchains are slow? …