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Latam Insights: Bukele Announces Self-Financed Budget; Salvadoran Coffee Purchase Settled With Bitcoin
23.9.2024
Welcome to Latam Insights, a compendium of Latin America’s most relevant crypto and economic news from the past week. In this issue, President Nayib Bukele announces a zero debt budget, a batch of Salvadoran coffee gets purchased using bitcoin, and Lightspark eyes the region’s markets....
Five crypto market predictions that haven’t come true — yet
30.8.2024
Crypto narratives sometimes promise a trip to the moon, but not all rockets make it, and markets tend to have a sloppy memory, often falling into the same traps.
An Introduction to Bitcoin Layer Two Solutions
2.6.2024
Bitcoin, the pioneer of blockchain technology, has faced challenges as its adoption has grown. With its original design allowing only seven transactions per second, the network often struggles with scalability, leading to high fees and slower transaction times. To address these issues, Bitcoin...
Breez Wallet Shows Offline Lightning Network Payments Solution
30.1.2024
Breez Wallet, a Lightning Network (LN) focused wallet, has shown an implementation that allows users to receive LN payments without being online. The service, which will be included in an upcoming non-custodial wallet app, leverages the wallets’ own SDK using mobile notifications to receive...
Lightspark’s CEO David Marcus Recognizes Current Non-Custodial Lightning Network Solutions Imply ‘Some Form of Compromise’
22.11.2023
David Marcus, co-founder and CEO of Lightspark, an institutional Lightning Network (LN) payment solutions provider, referred to the state of custodial and non-custodial transactions on the network. While Marcus believes that custodial LN for institutions is ready for prime time, he acknowledged...
Latam Insights: Unlicensed Crypto Exchanges Still Allowed to Operate in Brazil, Lightning Strikes Salvadoran Bitcoin ATMs
14.11.2023
Welcome to Latam Insights, a compendium of Latin America’s most relevant crypto and economic news during the last week. In this issue: The Central Bank of Brazil confirms that unlicensed exchanges can still operate in the country; El Salvador will integrate Lightning Network transactions...
Lightspark Open Sources Email-Like Protocol UMA; Raises Debate on Compliance
25.10.2023
Lightspark, a Lightning Network (LN) financial services company, has announced it has open-sourced Universal Money Address (UMA), a protocol similar to email, but for money. The protocol will be interoperable, allowing platforms to exercise due compliance on the transactions facilitated,...
Lightning Network Developer Warns About Major Vulnerability, Abandons Security Tasks
23.10.2023
Antoine Riard, a Lightning Network (LN) developer, recently disclosed a major vulnerability affecting Bitcoin’s scaling layer. This vulnerability, which was addressed with a series of mitigations, involves a “new transaction-relay jamming attack” that can affect shared funds...
Coinbase Founder Brian Armstrong Reveals Plans to Integrate Lightning Network
13.9.2023
According to Coinbase founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, Coinbase is actively working on integrating the Lightning Network (LN), the second-layer scaling protocol. Armstrong emphasized that bitcoin “is the most important asset in crypto” and added that the integration of LN would...
Bitcoin Core’s Version 24.0 Full-RBF Proposal Sparks Controversy, Synonym CEO Calls ‘Pet Agenda’ an ‘Attack’
4.11.2022
During the last few weeks, a number of individuals have been discussing the upcoming release of Bitcoin Core version 24.0 and how the codebase will include full-replace-by-fee (RBF) logic. The discussion has become controversial as a few Lightning Network and zero confirmation advocates have...
Microstrategy Is Seeking a Full-Time Lightning Network Engineer to Build a SaaS Platform
1.10.2022
The mobile software, cloud-based services, and business intelligence (BI) firm Microstrategy is seeking a full-time Lightning Network software engineer, according to a job listing published this week. The developer, if hired, will build a Lightning Network-based software as a service (SaaS)...
Fintech Firm Galoy Raises $4 Million, Startup Introduces Bitcoin-Backed Synthetic Dollar Product
3.8.2022
On Wednesday, Galoy, the firm behind El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach Wallet, announced that the company raised $4 million in funding in an investment round led by Hivemind Ventures. On the same day, the startup launched a new product called Stablesats, a stablecoin concept that leverages...
Zebedee Inks Deal With Mobile Game Studio Viker to Add BTC Rewards to Solitaire, Sudoku, Missing Letters
26.7.2022
Seven days after the financial technology and bitcoin payments firm Zebedee announced it secured a $35 million capital raise, the company has revealed a new partnership deal with the mobile game studio Viker. The two companies have enhanced three classic video games with Zebedee’s bitcoin...
David Marcus Launches Bitcoin Payments Startup Lightspark
16.5.2022
David Marcus, former cryptocurrency head at Meta, is launching Lightspark, another payments company that will use crypto as its central payment tool. The startup, which will have Marcus at the helm as CEO, also features some of Meta’s former employees and will explore the possibilities...
Cash App Introduces Paid in Bitcoin, BTC Roundup and Lightning Network Services
7.4.2022
At the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, Block, Inc., formerly Square, Inc., announced three new bitcoin services for the company’s mobile payment platform. The mobile payment platform Cash App will feature a “paid in bitcoin” service that allows users to auto-invest their work...
Visa should be 'scared': Lightning Labs raises $70M to add stablecoins
6.4.2022
The firm has built a new protocol called Taro to enable stablecoins to be sent and received on the Bitcoin Lightning Network
Argentina-Based Mobile Wallet App Belo Adds Lightning Network Support via Opennode
11.1.2022
On Monday, January 10, the Argentina-based mobile wallet company Belo announced that the platform has added support for the Lightning Network by partnering with the bitcoin payment processor and infrastructure provider Opennode. The mobile application allows users to trade and transact in pesos...
Chainalysis to Offer Lightning Network Monitoring Service to VASPs in 2022
11.12.2021
On December 10, the blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis revealed that the company has added support for Bitcoin’s second-layer protocol the Lightning Network (LN). According to Chainalysis, firms like exchanges and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) can leverage...
Custodial Lightning Network Service Attack Discovered by LN ‘Newbie’ — Hacker Strikes 6 LN Custodians
20.9.2021
On September 18, a Redditor posted to the r/bitcoin forum and explained how he discovered a way to “attack [the] lightning Network’s custodial services.” The Reddit account dubbed “Reckless Satoshi” wanted to figure out if a “discrepancy between real...
Jack Dorsey Discusses Square Building a ‘Bitcoin-Native’ Dex Platform, Project Lead Shares Insight
28.8.2021
On Friday, the CEO of Twitter and Square, Jack Dorsey talked about the decentralized exchange Square is constructing called “TBD” or the “TBD BTC DEX.” First mentioned in July, Dorsey tweeted that the company has “determined [TBD’s] direction and he also...