Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey — also the founder and CEO of United States-based Bitcoin (BTC)-supporting payments service Square — said that rolling out the Lightning Network on Square’s Cash App is a question of “when, not if.” Dorsey made his remarks during an interview alongside Elizabeth Stark, co-founder of Lightning Labs, on the Stephen Livera podcast Feb. 11. The Lightning Network (LN) is a second-layer solution to Bitcoin’s scalability limitations, which works by opening payment channels between users that keep the majority of transactions off-chain. In response to a question regarding possible LN support on the popular Cash …

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey has joined a community project demonstrating the functionality of Bitcoin’s (BTC) second-layer scaling protocol, the Lightning Network (LN), on Feb. 5. Dorsey, who has repeatedly pledged his faith in Bitcoin becoming the de facto currency of the internet, is now participating in an experiment dubbed LN Trust Chain, a chain of transactions on the LN that began circulating Jan. 19. Based on the concept of the Olympic flame, the “Lightning Torch” is a series of transactions between users of the Lightning Network, with participants communicating on Twitter with the hashtag #LNtrustchain. Each user receives …

About $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency had been obtained via illicit means in 2018, according to research published by crypto analytics company CipherTrace on Jan. 29. Of that $1.7 billion, over $950 million was stolen from crypto exchanges, representing a 3.6 times increase over 2017. On the other hand, at least $725 million was lost in 2018 to scams such as ponzi schemes, exit schemes and fraudulent initial coin offerings (ICOs). CipherTrace also listed what the company believes to be the top ten cryptocurrency threats: the highest is SIM swapping, which is a kind of identity theft involving taking control over …

A recent report from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has cast a spotlight on the efficacy and longevity of the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus and the future of Bitcoin. The paper takes an in-depth look at how the Bitcoin protocol verifies payments using blockchain technology and various consensus algorithms. PoW algorithms are a major point of discussion, with the author suggesting two major drawbacks. Firstly, the high cost of ensuring payment finality in a reasonable time frame, and the belief that PoW systems won’t produce adequate transaction fees to guarantee payment security in the long run. It is a controversial …

Amid a seemingly constant stream of new concepts claiming to be key to crypto to breaking through to the financial mainstream, one immovable issue remains ever-present: scalability. The crypto community is abuzz with new projects relating to the issue, from the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network to a brand new cryptocurrency designed by some of the top names in crypto and American academia. Cointelegraph takes a look at the latest scalability developments and what they can bring to blockchain and crypto. Some of the United States’ finest academic and technological have come together in a new project aiming to launch a …

Blockchain technology firm Bitfury Group has released a series of new tools for merchants and developers in a bid to drive wider adoption of the Lightning Network (LN). The launch was announced in a blog post from Bitfury’s LN engineering team, “Lightning Peach,” Jan. 23. Bitfury’s new LN-related offerings span an open source LN-enabled Bitcoin (BTC) wallet, a hardware LN payments terminal and e-commerce software for merchants, a host of developer tools, and a public LN node to facilitate users’ creation of LN payment channels. The Lightning Network is a second-layer solution to Bitcoin’s scalability limitations, which works by opening …

The capacity of the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) has surpassed $2 million on Sunday, Dec. 23, according to data provided by BTC statistics website bitcoinvisuals.com. Despite the year-long bear market, combined with the recent market crash dubbed the “crypto winter,” the Bitcoin Lightning network has seen strong growth throughout 2018. As of Dec. 23, node channels that support the Lighting scaling protocol were able to facilitate 496.8 BTC, almost reaching a landmark point of 500 BTC. At that time, the amount was worth about $2 million. The number of channels that are connecting nodes for the first time has …

Crypto artist “cryptograffiti” has sold a tiny artwork in a “micro auction” in a bid to promote Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network (LN) micropayments, according to a post from the artist’s Reddit handle published Dec. 20. The artwork — which measures just 1.44 x 1.75” and depicts a black swan collaged from details on the United States dollar bill — was sold, counterintuitively, to the lowest bidder, at a value of 1 millisatoshi ($0.000000037). A “satoshi” is the term used to christen one hundred millionth of one Bitcoin — in honor of the cryptocurrency’s mysterious inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. Cryptograffiti’s profile on …

An R&D lab at crypto startup TenX has tested the use of its cross-blockchain interoperability protocol to transfer ERC20 tokens for Bitcoin (BTC) using the Lightning Network (LN). The news was reported on R&D lab CoBlox’s blog today, Dec. 12, in reference to the demo on Dec. 7. As the blog post outlines, the technical challenge was to exchange ERC-20 tokens — which run on the Ethereum (ETH) platform but are not strictly “native” since they rely on invoking a smart contract to transfer ownership — for Bitcoin’s smallest transactable unit, known as “Satoshi,” using the second-layer scalability LN protocol. …

Stalwart Bitcoin (BTC) community subreddit “/r/Bitcoin” has hit the 1 million subscriber mark, according to a post from moderator “ibelite” on Dec. 2. One of the most well-known online Bitcoin communities, /r/Bitcoin was founded in September 2010, almost two years after the release of the Bitcoin white paper. The subreddit has reached the 1 million subscribers point amid the recent market slump beginning on Nov. 14, which continued throughout the week as Bitcoin fell below $4,000 on Nov. 29. The subreddit notes in its description that they are “dedicated to Bitcoin, the currency of the Internet,” continuing: “Bitcoins are issued …

From soft and hard forks to protocol upgrades, to the implementation of Segwit and to the future outlook of the Lightning Network (LN), the Bitcoin network has come a long way since its inception in January 2009. As of Sept. 18, 2018, the average block size on the Bitcoin network is .8MB and the average number of transactions per block is 1609 — so a few eyebrows were raised when a block over 2MB was added to the blockchain on Sept. 5, 2018. Bitcoin block 540107 came in at 2.26MB; in terms of megabytes, a block this big has never …

A team of Bitcoin (BTC) engineers has announced the launch of the Bitcoin Operations Technology Group (Bitcoin Optech) addressing the problem of Bitcoin’s scalability, according to their statement published July 20. Bitcoin Optech is a non-profit organization backed by leading industry players like PayPal Board Member Wences Casares, executive of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Ltd John Pfeffer, and cryptocurrency research and development group Chaincode Labs. At this stage, Bitcoin Optech focuses on “operational technical work, such as segwit usage, transaction batching, fee estimation and coin selection,” helping companies integrate the rapidly developing technology. Working closely with engineers from companies …