Executive chairman of Microstrategy, Michael Saylor, does not like to be called out. He responded to a poll shared by Eric Wall, a crypto researcher, that suggested he had not used Bitcoin’s (BTC) layer-2 Lightning Network more than three times with a Twitter poll of his own. The correct answer is Yes, and I will make three more transactions of 1,000,000 sats each to the 3 posters of the most liked #Lightning⚡️ memes in the comments below. https://t.co/qXZ90q4Ly9 — Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) October 4, 2022 Saylor replied to the poll with a resounding yes, and kickstarted a meme competition with …

Bear markets are for building out capacity on the layer-2 Lightning Network. Despite macroeconomic headwinds and sluggish price action the Lightning Network, the layer-2 payments solution on Bitcoin (BTC) continues to flourish. The Bitcoin Lightning Network reached a milestone capacity of 5,000 BTC ($96 million). In effect, more and more Bitcoin is being introduced to Lightning Network payment channels worldwide, as Bitcoiners continue to support the growth of the network. The Lightning Network allows users to send Bitcoin (or satoshis, the smallest amount of a Bitcoin) to send or receive money faster and with lower fees. The more capacity on …

Bitcoin (BTC) changed the world as a decentralized and non-governmental form of currency that can facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions that transcend national borders. But, despite this functionality, Bitcoin’s role as a payment mechanism has been called into question due to its low transaction throughput. The Bitcoin blockchain can handle up to seven transactions per second, which means that network demand has seen the average transaction fee on the network reach an all-time high above $62 during specific periods. In order to address low throughput and high transaction fees, developers made the Lightning Network — a layer-2 scaling solution that allows …

Lightning Labs, a developer of the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network (LN), released a beta version of the Lightning Network Daemon (lnd) — a complete implementation of the LN node — with added support to the latest protocol upgrades including Taproot and Musig2, among other improvements. lnd is a software component that handles various aspects within the LN including managing a database, generating payment invoices and revoking payments, to name a few. The latest software release, named lnd 0.15 beta (v0.15-beta), aims to empower developers to create solutions for more use cases by leveraging the Bitcoin network’s latest capabilities. Announcing lnd …

In light of the recent fragility in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, Bitcoin (BTC) maximalist and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor feels that Bitcoin and the Lightning network can come to the rescue of the DeFi market. With two enormous protocols, Terra and Celsius, facing acute difficulties within a month of each other, the DeFi sector is going through a tough time. And in a recent tweet, Saylor suggested that Bitcoin and Lightning could help stabilize the industry. According to Saylor, Bitcoin provides a “sound ethical, economic, and technical foundation for DeFi.” He went on to say that the Lightning protocol …

There’s cause for celebration from the world’s largest cryptocurrency. The Lightning Network hit the 4,000 Bitcoin (BTC) public capacity milestone, meaning $120 million in value is ready for peer-to-peer payments. The Lightning Network first broke the 1,000 BTC barrier in August 2020 and the 2,000 BTC barrier in July 2021. The capacity has doubled in the space of 18 months. CoinCorner CEO Daniel Scott told Cointelegraph that “we had slow and steady growth with Lightning capacity to begin, but since Jan[uary] 2021, the uptick has been strong.” Danny Brewster, CEO of United Kingdom-based Bitcoin exchange Fast Bitcoins told Cointelegraph that …

Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day! Before you dial for a Margherita to commemorate the world’s first real-world Bitcoin transaction, here’s a slice of trivia: What do a family holiday to Japan, a 50 Cent album, a steak dinner and a framed cat photo have in common? They were all paid for with Bitcoin (BTC) by members of the Cointelegraph Bitcoin community! And just like the Bitcoin pizzas that cost 10,000 BTC, which are now worth more than $300 million, the community’s Bitcoin purchases have also skyrocketed. Benjamin de Waal, the vice president of engineering at Bitcoin exchange Swan Bitcoin, told Cointelegraph, …

The orange pilling adventure in El Salvador continues. In a video that beggars belief, 44 central bankers and financial delegates from emerging markets around the world shout “Bitcoin!” while posing for a photo in El Zonte, El Salvador. And all the Central Bankers screamed…. pic.twitter.com/MxdOrYD3lc — Bitcoin Beach (@Bitcoinbeach) May 20, 2022 It seems that by day three of El Salvador’s financial inclusion conference, the central bankers were warming to Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation, enjoying a trip to Bitcoin (BTC) Beach. El Zonte or "Bitcoin Beach" is the home of Bitcoin in El Salvador, an iconic destination for Bitcoin enthusiasts. It …

The Lightning Network (LN) just got a bit faster, as the suitably named Bolt Card now enables Bitcoin (BTC) enthusiasts to pay for goods and services using contactless technology. A data analyst at the company behind the card, CoinCorner, took the Bolt card on a trial run on the Isle of Man, a British Crown dependency in the Irish Sea. “MSW” — as he is known — tapped to pay at more than eight point-of-sale (PoS) devices during his lunchtime investigation. It worked like this: For any PoS device showing a Lightning invoice, MSW simply hovered the NFC-enabled Bolt Card …

This week, 44 central bankers from developing countries around the world are attending a conference in El Salvador to discuss financial inclusion, financing for small and medium-sized businesses and Bitcoin (BTC). Central bank delegates from Ghana to Burundi, Jordan to the Maldives and Pakistan to Costa Rica arrived in San Salvador for the conference upon El SalvadorPresident Nayib Bukele’s invitation. Organized by the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, a global policy leadership alliance, and in partnership with El Salvador’s central bank, the conference will run for three days. In a tweet, the head of El Salvador central bank, Douglas Rodríguez, shared: …

Bitcoin (BTC) is for all. For you, for Michael Saylor in Miami, and for 38-year-old Jorge, a Mozambican family man who's using the largest cryptocurrency to make ends meet. Jorge, who goes by his first name for anonymity, lives in the tiny village of Bomba, Mozambique, on its southeast coast. Since the COVID-19 pandemic stripped away tourism from the sleepy surf town, one of Jorge’s primary wage earners—tourism—disappeared. Luckily, Bitcoin adoption is slowly swelling in Africa–from the Central African Republic across to Senegal and further north. Mozambique is also showing signs it's warming to the world's most popular crypto. Mozambique …

Samson Mow, former chief strategy officer at Blokstream and founder of JAN3, is convinced that most decentralized finance protocols can’t compete with Bitcoin when it comes to providing an effective monetary network because of their lack of decentralization. As Mow pointed out, DeFi projects are governed by entities that can modify the protocol at will. “Bitcoin, at the fundamental level, is money, and it should be immutable,” explained Mow. “If you can change it at will, then you’re no better than a fiat currency governed by the Fed.” Bitcoin’s (BTC) decentralization makes it very difficult to modify its protocol, which …