One of the leading digital payment service providers, Cash App, has just integrated the Lightning Network, a Bitcoin Layer 2 solution allowing for drastically cheaper and faster transfers. The update comes three years after Jack Dorsey, a CEO of Block, the company that owns and develops Cash App, guaranteed that the Lightning implementation is not a question of if but when.
Key takeaways:
- While the team at Cash App has not yet made any official announcements, the news of the Lightning Network integration started circulating on social media, with multiple users sharing screenshots that confirm the integration.
- Cash App’s 36 million monthly active users can look forward to far cheaper and near-instantaneous BTC transactions once support for the Lightning Network rolls out to all customers.
- The Lightning Network is capable of processing millions of transactions per second. Since transaction settlements occur off-chain, the transaction fee is infinitely smaller than on energy-intensive Bitcoin Layer 1, making BTC micro-transactions a practical reality.
- Jack Dorsey, who recently stepped down as the CEO of Twitter, is well known for his strong support of crypto, particularly Bitcoin.
- In December, the rebranding of the American financial services firm Square to Block led many to speculate that the name change implies a pivot towards blockchain technology.
- According to data from Bitcoin Treasuries, Block is currently in possession of 8,027 BTC (worth over $350 million at current market rates), the sixth-largest stash of BTC owned by any public company.
- Cash App initially added support for buying and selling Bitcoin in January 2018. The decision proved to be a lucrative one for Cash App – in the third quarter of 2021 alone, Bitcoin drove a whopping $1.81 billion in gross revenue, good for a net profit of $42 million.
