The research unit of Arcane Crypto predicts the Lightning Network will go parabolic as adoption of the Bitcoin (BTC) layer-two payment protocol ramps up over the decade. Arcane Research published the “State of Lightning” report on Tuesday and analyzed the Lightning Network in terms of current capacity, wallet payment volume, the growing rate of adoption, and the switch from online services to everyday usage. The report provides ambitious estimates for the future of the Lighting Network, such as 90% of Salvadorans over the age of 15 having access to Lightning payments by 2026, and 50 million Lightning users, representing $17 …

Institutional interest in crypto is growing, confirmed by a Goldman Sachs survey, which found that 40% of the company’s high-net-worth clients were already exposed to cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins — which offer a more secure and steady option in the crypto space — have experienced hyper-growth, reaching a $119 billion market cap. The volatility of crypto has attracted more conservative investors to asset-backed stablecoins. Stablecoins are a form of private money. As Christina Segal-Knowles, executive director for financial markets infrastructure at the Bank of England, points out, modern money is a combination of public and private funds, up to 95% of which …

Shidan Gouran of Gulf Pearl: Shidan is a co-founder of Gulf Pearl, a Canadian merchant bank and advisory firm with a focus on emerging technologies. “With respect to blockchain technology, the ability to easily move wealth from one country to another and to prevent seizure of assets due to belonging to a particular religious, political, social or ethnic group is a very powerful feature that public blockchains can enable. All truly democratic countries should implement safeguard measures against the potential of a tyrannical government formation because no system is perfect. I believe digital bearer instruments enabled by blockchains are one …

Cash may be king when it comes to purchasing Bitcoin (BTC), as recent data states that there has been a spike in crypto ATM installations during 2021, showing a 71.3% increase from Jan. 1, 2021, until the time of reporting. Specifically speaking, there are currently over 24,000 crypto ATMs located across the globe. Data further suggests that crypto ATMs are being installed at a rate of about 52.3 machines per day. While growth is clearly underway for the cryptocurrency sector, the reason behind the surge in crypto ATMs may be due to a demand for using cash to buy Bitcoin. …

Wouter Witvoet, CEO of DeFi Technologies: “In the past, El Salvador struggled with trust in its monetary policy, so in 2001, it ‘dollarized’ its economy and effectively gave control of its monetary system to the U.S. Federal Reserve. It saw the U.S. dollar as a more stable, trustworthy currency than its own. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the U.S. has been pursuing a very experimental form of monetary policy involving tools like quantitative easing and a central bank that now directly monetizes, or purchases, government-issued debt to keep interest rates low. This is a playbook that is dictated by …

Africa-focused but U.S. based unified financial data platform Pngme this week announced its successful seed funding round raised $3 million. The investment was led by Radical Ventures, Raptor Group, Lateral Capital, and EchoVC. It was actually closed in the third quarter of 2020 and came after the fintech startup raised $500,000 in a pre-seed round in 2018. The platform collects user-permissioned data through a partner’s existing mobile app using a one-click data-sharing feature which then delivers real-time financial data and alerts. Pngme hopes to tap into the burgeoning mobile money market in Africa that was kicked off with M-Pesa in …

The crypto community has a saying: “Not your keys, not your coins,” which means that if you hold your crypto on a third-party custodial wallet, you don’t truly have ownership of the coins. The entity controlling the private key of the wallet ultimately has power over it. Self-hosted wallets, or non-custodial wallets, allow individuals to receive, send and store their own cryptocurrency without the need of a custodial entity. As life has become increasingly more digitized, the use of cash for transactions and as a store of value has declined considerably. For those in our economy with access to digital …

One of the biggest challenges emerging markets face is volatility. Fueled by political and economic instability, dependency on a limited number of industries, and constraints on market accessibility, these matters are exacerbated by a bad or nonexistent regulatory framework. While it doesn’t appear that many of these elements will change anytime soon, there are financial and technological implementations that can be introduced to provide stability. Tokenization — a relatively novel, blockchain-based, cryptographic ratification of assets — can be the vehicle that empowers this vision to be realized. What emerging markets are missing: Participation and liquidity Essential to a successful, mature …

On Sept. 27, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sought to center his employees’ work around the company’s core mission: “to bring economic freedom to people all over the world.” Armstrong argues for a narrow interpretation of Coinbase’s mission to build the best possible product because it is “already hugely ambitious” and because companies generally cannot succeed if their goals “include all forms of equality and justice.” Armstrong’s perspective is not unique to Coinbase and represents a broader tech industry incarnation of the white-savior complex rooted in the belief of the product’s inherent goodness. This belief is especially noteworthy in crypto, given …

Africa is the home to 1.2 billion people and what has been described as the world’s largest trade area — the African Continental Free Trade Area. Africa is forging a new path to driving development, and access to financial services will play a significant role in its economic growth. The need to provide improved systems for poverty reduction, if not alleviation, is further accentuated when one considers that 416 million Africans live in extreme poverty, and access to financial services is right at the heart of the solution. In a review of the impact of financial inclusion on economic growth, …

In March 2020, COVID-19 was declared by the World Health Organization to be a pandemic. Just over six months after that declaration, there have been almost 33 million cases of the disease worldwide and nearly 1 million deaths. While most of the stories from the pandemic involve its astronomical cost in terms of human life and suffering, the disease has also revealed a number of problems in our global economic infrastructure. A surprising number of these weaknesses might be addressed, or at least reduced, with blockchain technology. As a result of COVID-19, businesses around the globe, including in the most …

In a broad sense, 2020 has been the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As it toward 1 million deaths and over 30 million infections, governments have been found wanting. Our institutions have crumbled, leaders reacted too slowly, and all of the systems both in place and newly created to protect us — healthcare, aged care, testing, protective equipment supply chains, contact tracing, etc. — have collapsed. But 2020 has also very much been the year of decentralized finance, which has come to be known as DeFi. DeFi is crypto To understand why DeFi has captured the imagination of the entire …