Bitcoin Lightning Network is now around 6 months live on main net and doing extremely well. The network is growing fast, becoming more reliable every day and more advanced functions are being developed. Shortly after the main net launch pioneers started to set up a LN node and began to accept the instant but at that time risky Lightning payments. Also the first wallets came available. This week the 2nd phase of adoption has started.
Lightning Network moves lightning fast!
Merchant payment processors start to integrate Lightning
This week two payment processors announced Lightning integration in their service. This is HUGE news because it means that a big group of merchants can now accept Lightning without any extra work or risk. It will also create high transaction volume that will function as a real stress test and convince bigger merchants that are interested but still hesitant to start accepting Lightning.
Coingate
Coingate, a settled and well known merchant payment provider will integrate Lightning payments from the first of July after a month of testing. The more than 1500 merchants that are using the service of Coingate will now be Able to accept Lightning payments without any downside. For now a selection of merchants is made and the list will be announced soon. When you are interested where you can pay with Lightning soon follow them on Twitter.
https://blog.coingate.com/2018/06/lightning-network-payments-intro/
GloBee
Also a smaller and less known payment processor named GloBee announced Lightning integration. That smaller players come in first was expected because they can take more risk and are more manoeuvrable. Bigger ones will follow when the new ground is explored and declared safe. When you want to follow their progress you can follow them on twitter.
Get involved now and be rewarded!
The risk of accepting Lightning is reducing every day while the rewards can be enormously. I think that the above mentioned merchants are making a very smart move by integrating Lightning early because they not only offer the cheapest and fastest payment method possible with the cryptocurrency that is most widely owned to their customers, there will be more benefits:
Free publicity and reputation
Early Lightning integration will be rewarded by the Bitcoin community and your company name will be mentioned in hundreds of forum posts, articles and newspapers. This free publicity will lead to links to your website and additional users of your service. Beside that it will also give your company a Bitcoin friendly reputation and bitcoiners will mention you in a positive way on social media.
Some will even drop another service to become your customer because many in the Bitcoin community feel extremely responsible for the well being of the BTC network and Lightning adoption will greatly add to this. I am for example using and promoting the VPN service Torguard because they started to accept Lightning in the early days (few months ago LOL) while it was still very risky and they promised to pay the expenses if customer funds got lost.
Extra income through well connected node
When you are a payment processor, exchange or other business with a high transaction volume setting up a Lightning node can be very rewarding next to the already existing business model of your company. When you have many customers paying with Lightning your node will become very well connected and also many payments that have nothing to do with your business will go through your node and you will collect small fees. Although the fees are tiny, it will add up if the volume is high.
The integration of Lightning in your business now will be rewarded!
The next phases of Lightning adoption
Lightning Network as a cheap and instant payment method is just the first step, but there is are much other interesting implementations coming. The Dapp (Decentralised App) world will be disrupted since many can be recreated on top of Lightning but much faster, cheaper, more secure and more scalable. Satoshiplace was already able to attract more users than the top ten Ethereum Dapps combined and it didn’t have any negative influence on the Bitcoin blockchain while Krypto Kitties managed to totally obstruct the entire ETH network.
Lightning is already being implemented in simple applications like video games and content creation, but via swaps entire exchanges can run on the Lightning protocol and not only cryptocurrencies can be traded in a trust less way but everything that is digital like content, certificates, domain names etc. More advanced applications are already being build on top of Lightning by Microsoft, Kim Dot Com and other big players.
Also the possibility of micro transactions and even streaming of money is extremely interesting. What do you think about a button under a news article about an earthquake and when you click you (and thousands of others) send a few Satoshi directly to the people there without greedy bureaucrats stealing their part first? Or paying a movie you are watching per second or earn your salary real time per minute? These are simple examples but I am sure it will evolve in extremely exiting use cases.
This will shine some light on the (future) use cases of Lightning
Can alts compete?
My guess is NO: On top of Lightning you can rebuild 95% of the Ethereum Dapps without high and fluctuating network fees, scalability issues and security flaws. The other 5% will be covered by future development. Smart contracts might not be disrupted immediately, but as described earlier, fast and cheap coins will be eaten by Lightning soon. My prediction is that Bitcoin will evolve to the Internet of money and trust and that alts will become obsolete in the process.
And what about Bitcoin Cash?
LOL
Conclusion:
The adoption of Lightning goes Lightning fast and the prospects are extremely exiting. There never was an ICO and nobody could grab millions within a few months thus Lightning is never really hyped and kind of flying under the radar. The smartest go in now and position themselves to be a big player when it grows out to the internet of money. Be one of them!
Disclaimer
This is no financial advice, just my view on the market.
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