Bitcoin along with other altcoins are bearish in the past weeks and it is another reason to be worried especially for investors who entered late in the game. Bitcoin is currently struggling to stay in the $8,000 range. Should this give you a reason to worry?
For Billionaire Jack Dorsey, Bitcoin is far from over. What he did was to invest in Lightning Labs which is a blockchain startup that focuses on improving the speed of Bitcoin transactions. Currently, Lightning Labs has already received $2.5 million funding from prominent players in the crypto world including the likes of Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, former PayPal COO David Sacks, BitGo CTO Ben Davenport, BitGo CTO Ben Davenport, Venture capital firm Digital Currency Group, and Vlad Tenev of Robinhood.
Faster Bitcoin Transactions
If you will ask Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark, she said that it “functions as a software layer that sits on top of the bitcoin network”. What it does is act as a checking account that will help send transactions at a much faster rate. Stark mentioned that “if bitcoin is like a decentralized savings account, Lightning is a decentralized checking account where users can send money instantly”.
It is true that a lot of people have complained about the slow transactions offered by Bitcoin especially as its popularity grew in the last year. Stark mentioned that Lightning Labs is the answer to the slow transactions as well as the high transaction fees.
“One thing we’ve learned is that it can be hard to predict bitcoin fees in advance, and there may be large swings, so having a solution like Lightning with very low fees on the network is key”. She also mentioned that “You still pay on-chain bitcoin fees when getting on or off of Lightning, but that may happen infrequently, like once a month or year”.
What Makes Litecoin Interested?
What exactly makes Litecoin interested in investing in Lightning Labs? Bitcoin-Litecoin dynamics can be interesting. For starters, Litecoin was built differently from other altcoins. Its goal is to not become the next Bitcoin. Litecoin was designed to become the next best thing to Bitcoin. And for this reason, its popularity grow as Bitcoin’s popularity grow as well.
If you will ask Nicholas Cawley of DailyFX, he mentioned that “I think Litecoin will overtake Bitcoin Cash but in the market, capitalization terms will struggle to overtake Bitcoin”.
Litecoin plans to become the cryptocurrency that will be used for day-to-day operations given its cheaper transaction fees and faster transactions.
Can Lightning Labs be able to save Bitcoin from sliding downward? Or should this signal investors to start buying while Bitcoin price is still below $8,000? Could this actually mean that it is only a matter of time before the price of Bitcoin recovers considering what Lightning Labs offer to the table?
Over the past months, Bitcoin price has struggled mainly because of the regulatory changes that have been applied to the different parts of the world. Until now, regulators have no standard consensus as to how they should be handling cryptocurrencies.
