29.03.2024

Bitcoin’s Lighting ‘Torch’ Reignites, Blazes Through 38 Countries in 3 Days

The goal is to highlight the speed and global nature of the lightning network, a payment technology that could solve or at least greatly ease some of bitcoin’s most critical problems. Started on a whim for fun, the torch became a global event, even carried by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, showing how frictionless and indifferent to borders the form of payment is compared to legacy methods like Visa and Paypal.

Bitcoin’s lightning torch is back, and it’s zipped through at least 38 countries already.

The torch is a digital game first ignited in January 2019 by pseudonymous bitcoin enthusiast Hodlonaut, known for his Twitter avatar of a cat in a spacesuit. Each «torchbearer» sends a tiny amount of bitcoin to the next. A key rule is to add a little bit more money to the payment each time it moves to someone new.

On Sunday, Hodlonaut lit the torch again. Since then, many enthusiasts have been posting lightning «invoices» on Twitter to which the torchbearer can send the next lightning payment.

It’s moving around the world much faster the second time around, already reaching 91 people in three days.

«Made over 30 passes across the globe as I slept!» Hodlonaut said Tuesday morning.

Last time, it took longer than two weeks to get to 139 people in 37 countries. But the torch made some exciting stops on that tour. Despite worries about breaking U.S. sanctions, the torch made it to Iran last March. A group of Venezuelans received the torch with no electricity. In an interesting experiment, they powered their lightning node with a motorcycle battery.

The first torch fizzled out when it reached a hard-coded limit on how much lightning can be sent in a single payment. The cap is 4.29 million satoshis, the unit for one hundred millionth of a bitcoin. Developers could lift the cap (which works out to about $370 at current exchange rates) when they think the payment technology is secure enough.

Until then, Hodlonaut is eager to see how long the new torch lasts.

«How many sats before it breaks?» he tweeted, using the short form of «satoshis,»

Bitcoin News Summary – January 20, 2020

Block.One, the company behind the EOS ICO, will no longer be launching its new crypto-integrated social network, Voice, on the EOS blockchain. Instead, a custom EOSIO platform will be deployed. Block.One has yet to explain its about-face, although some speculate that the EOS chain is strained and unable to support a popular new app.

As the trial of BSV founder, Craig Wright, drags on; his various claims continue to be disproven. The most recent claim, that a bonded courier would deliver the private keys to a fortune in early bitcoins, has been dispelled by Craig’s own lawyer. The lawyer stated to press that Wright does not possess those private keys.

A recent survey published by HSB revealed that about 36% of small and medium-sized businesses in the USA accept some form of crypto as payment. 59% of companies surveyed said they had also purchased crypto to use in some business capacity. 505 companies were polled starting in October of last year.

The business-focused social network site, Linkedin, released a report which shows that blockchain-related skills are currently the most sought-after category by employers. Demand for blockchain skills is highest in developed Western regions such as the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. Demand for blockchain skills surpasses all other IT skills, including AI. Major corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon are all looking for blockchain developers.

Before we conclude, this week’s “Bitcoin quick question” is what happens when Bitcoins are lost? If a user loses access to his wallet and doesn’t have a backup of his private key or seed phrase, his Bitcoins are lost forever. Lost Bitcoins still remain on the blockchain but there’s no way to access them since it’s impossible to recover the private key that controls them. A study done by Chainalysis back in 2017 suggests that somewhere between 3 and 4 million Bitcoins are already lost forever. One unfortunate example of this is James Howells, an IT worker from Newport, who unintentionally threw away his hard drive with the private key to 7,500 bitcoin in mid-2013.

Have a question you want us to answer? Just leave it in the comment section below. And if you want to support our videos, consider using the Brave browser for faster, ad free browsing that can also earn you rewards. Just visit the link in the description below.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *