- The FED and ECB have taken different sides on the scalability of the Lightning Network as a viable solution to solving the world’s payment problems
- LQwD currently has 19 active nodes on the Lightning Network – each with a capacity that continues to grow, with the goal of creating access to 24 countries worldwide by the end of the current quarter
- LQwD’s active nodes include US-West, Ireland, India, Germany, Brazil, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, South Africa, Bahrain, Indonesia, Italy, Australia, Japan-Osaka, France, Canada, England, and Japan
- The cryptocurrency market is expected to reach US $2.2 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 7.1%
On the heels of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Working Paper Series release of
“The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money,” the European Central Bank (“ECB”) has published its own,
“Towards the Holy Grail of Cross-Border Payments,” exploring six potential avenues for addressing the inefficiencies in cross-border payments to address the need for immediate, cheap, universal reach, and secure settlement in the industry (
https://ibn.fm/mmcF1).
Much like the FED paper, ECB lays out the framework for using blockchain and Bitcoin payment structures to facilitate payments but also incorporates the drawbacks associated with the ever-changing technology. The ECB paper hypothesizes that even with the use of the Lightning Network, a layer 2 payment protocol, there is no guarantee that the underlying technology could support cross-border payment long-term.
The ECB’s paper takes the oppositional side of the debate on the Lightning Network and blockchain providing payment solutions to scale the accessibility of sending and receiving payments worldwide. The FED paper still supports the idea that had it been introduced earlier in Bitcoin’s revolution, there could have been less congestion using blockchain technology for payments during the breakout of the cryptocurrency. The FED notes that, with the Lightning Network, there is a higher potential for transactions-per-second compared to leading payment platforms, including Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal (
https://ibn.fm/djhpM).
LQwD FinTech (TSX.V: LQWD) (OTCQB: LQWDF), a financial technology company focused on creating enterprise-grade infrastructure to drive bitcoin adoption, believes in the scalability of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network – investing its own Bitcoin assets to create worldwide micropayment channels using its 19 active nodes on the network. By the end of the current quarter, LQwD plans to increase node access to 24 countries by leveraging the Lightning Network to facilitate faster, cheaper, and more secure micropayments than current payment infrastructures.
The company currently has 19 active nodes on the Lightning Network, including US-West, Ireland, India, Germany, Brazil, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sweden, South Korea, South Africa, Bahrain, Indonesia, Italy, Australia, Japan-Osaka, France, Canada, England, and Japan. The first node opened by LQwD, US-West, has seen substantial growth since November 2021, with a capacity of 6.556784520 BTC (US $153,256.77) and 120 channels.
The company also released its proprietary platform as a service (“PaaS”),
https://lqwd.tech/, in November 2021, serving as a platform for node hosting and managing Lightning Network channels. The company’s technology also acts as a Liquidity Service Provider (“LSP”) for merchants.
The market’s growth supports LQwD’s stance on leveraging the Lightning Network to scale Bitcoin acceptance. A Markets and Markets report valued the cryptocurrency market at US $1.6 billion in 2021 and expects growth at a CAGR of 7.1% from 2022 to 2026, resulting in a value of US $2.2 billion by the end of 2026. The driving factors to facilitate this type of growth include transparency through distributed ledger technology and the growth in venture capital investments to support the scalability of the digital currency revolution (
https://ibn.fm/iO0df).
LQwD hopes to leverage its position and enhance trust in its products and services through its transparency as a publicly-traded company. This allows for easy access to capital through the market, leverages its stock as currency for acquisitions, and attracts/retains top industry talent for further scalability to adopt Bitcoin.
For more information, visit the company’s website at
www.LQwDFinTech.com.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to LQWDF are available in the company’s newsroom at
https://ibn.fm/LQWDF
