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Bitcoin’s price may have seen some downturn over the last week, but several major announcements might just prove to be lightning in a bottle for the king of cryptos.
Strike CEO Jack Mallers disclosed a number of high-powered agreements, including one with ecommerce giant Shopify, that will see Strike’s Bitcoin Lightning Network be utilized to integrate bitcoin transactions.
The news came at the 2022 Bitcoin Conference held in Miami. Maller took the stage Thursday to announce the major news:
“You’re gonna be able to walk into a grocery store, to Whole Foods, to a Chipotle, if you want to use a Lightning node over Tor, you do that,” Mallers said on stage at Bitcoin 2022. “Any online merchant that uses Shopify can accept payments without the 1949 boomer [credit card] network, receive it instantly, cash final, no intermediary, no 3% fee.”
Maller’s said Strike is working with companies including NCR, a major Point-of-Sale provider, Blackhawk, and Shopify to enable its Lightning Network bitcoin payment technology.
Maller’s presentation revealed that McDonald’s, Walmart, Walgreens and many more U.S. retailers will have Bitcoin payment functionality as a result.
A press release noted:
“Strike’s integration enables Shopify merchants to diversify their existing payment options and reach untapped global markets and purchasing power. Strike’s integration also allows Shopify merchants to generate savings through low-cost payment processing. By instantly converting bitcoin (BTC) payments to dollars, Strike removes certain complexities merchants face in holding bitcoin.”
Mallers also said at the conference, “I’ve been working with Senator Cynthia Lummis [R-WY] to make sure that in the United States of America we support this open payment standard and it isn’t threatened by anybody else.”
Major Payment Processors and Investment Platforms Also Seeing The Light
Just a day before Maller’s announcement, Paypal, Square, BitPay and investment app provider Robinhood all announced Lightning Network integrations to speed Bitcoin transactions while reducing fees.
Add it up, and it basically opens up a currency use case for Bitcoin, as YahooNews coverage of the conference noted.
Bitcoin, which is legally considered a commodity in the U.S., nonetheless has features that have led some to describe it as more of a “money commodity.”
It can be transacted directly between parties with requisite wallet software. It can also be held in custody by third party centralized exchanges and trading platforms.
But Strike’s Bitcoin Lightning Network, has offered a solution that allows Bitcoin to be transacted much more efficiently than just relying on the bitcoin blockchain network alone.
Lightning Network is like a “superhighway” that uses smart contracts to keep track of crypto transactions that two parties participate in, allowing many “off-chain” transactions, with only certain final outcome states written to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Robinhood also made news for announcing its intentions to expand its investment platform to international markets, with crypto trading being at the forefront of its strategy.
But the crackle and pop surrounding Strike and the Lightning Network was probably the biggest news to emerge from the 2022 Bitcoin Conference.
Mallers previously shook the world—or perhaps more specifically, central banks and the IMF—with last year’s Conference announcement that El Salvador would implement the Lightning Network for bitcoin legal tender adoption.