Lightning Network usage soars

While many in the rich and widely banked countries, blindfolded by our dollars’ and euros’ (seeming) stability, still maintain the “Bitcoin is not money” rhetoric, people in the rest of the world increasingly use it as such.

Of course, the main chain, with its high fees and slow throughput, is not quite suitable for everyday transactions, and that’s why the best measuring stick of Bitcoin adoption as a means of exchange is Lightning Network ⚡ payment volume.

This week Arcane Research published a thorough study on Lightning Network, a second layer built on Bitcoin and allowing millions of transactions per second, almost instantly and with ridiculously low fees.

LN usage was rising steadily since the end of 2020, but it is September 2021 that marked a true inflection point, growing 94% in a month.

So what happened in September?

El Salvador recognized BTC as a legal tender, and its 3M of Chivo wallet users now have access to LN on their phones.

What’s more, Paxful, a P2P crypto exchange hugely popular in Africa, integrated LN on September 14th, and by the end of month it was Twitter that enabled LN-powered crypto tipping on its platform.

You known where it’s going ? the question is what the next strong driver of crypto adoption will be ?