Yet a steady stream of crypto exchanges have been integrating with the Lightning Network in recent weeks and months, including Robinhood, Kraken, AAX, Paxful, and OKX.
For instance, nodes running the Lightning Network protocol reached just over 20,000 from the beginning of February, having stood at 9,000 a year previously.
“Since we launched Lightning last fall, our weekly volume of deposits has increased 3x.
Other exchanges, which have integrated Lightning Network more recently, were unable to report back to Cryptonews.com with meaningful figures or estimates of LN usage.
“We’ve seen users in over 70 countries use Lightning on Paxful.
As Youssef’s remarks suggest, there’s certainly a growing demand for Bitcoin-based micropayments, something which the Lightning Network helps provide.
The report also revealed that the Lightning Network processed roughly 900,000 transactions in the month of November 2021 alone, with 2021’s total equalling nearly four million transactions.
But while the exchanges that have embraced the Lightning Network have found it worthwhile, there are three significant holdouts from the recent chain of new integrations: Coinbase, Binance, and FTX.
As such, we may not see Lightning Network usage really take off for the time being, even though its underlying technology has matured.
“There’s a place for HODL mentality within the Bitcoin community, but we also need to be inclusive for Bitcoin’s other use cases such as remittance, wealth preservation, and payments.
“While spending via LN might be convenient in jurisdictions that do not levy capital gains taxes, recording a gain or loss on every transaction is burdensome.