Crypto: The Bitcoin Lightning Strike

Lightning: Bitcoin’s Second Layer
When Bitcoin arrived in January of 2009, one of the first criticisms was that it was too slow. It takes about an hour for a transaction to finalize on the network.* It was also criticized because the block size limited the number of Bitcoin transactions meaning that Bitcoin couldn’t compete with Visa and MasterCard.** This all changed with the adoption of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The base layer—the Bitcoin blockchain—is great for final settlement of large transactions; however, with an hour wait time for a transaction, it’s terrible for buying a cup of coffee.

You probably don’t think about this, but credit cards take even longer to reach final settlement. When you buy a cup of coffee with a credit card,  » READ MORE