Exploring the disruptive opportunity of the Bitcoin Lightning Network

With recent disruptive technologies and startups like Uber, and Airbnb turning entire industries upside down its not hard to see how the decentralized and open nature of the internet can make things possible that never were. We have seen this story before with email, instant messaging, the web, Amazon, YouTube, smart phones and music streaming. All were never possible because the foundation technologies were not available. Once the foundation technology is available its only a matter of time before products and services come out that were previously never possible. Imagine trying to create a light bulb before electricity was discovered.

In March of 2018 the Lightning Network was finally ready for the Bitcoin Network. The Lightning Network is a second layer network that works on top of Bitcoin and promises to solve Bitcoins scaling issues, but also improves Bitcoins privacy, speed and adds new features to Bitcoin that were never possible. It enables almost fee free, near instantaneous payments in amounts so small, at first it doesn't make sense. Why would anyone want to send 100th of a USD Penny instantaneously? Nobody has ever done that because it has never been possible, but now it is. A new foundation technology was just born that allows anyone with an internet connection, and a little bit of Bitcoin to send tiny amounts of money to anyone anywhere. Even better, you can send those tiny amounts in a constant stream.

With streaming money now possible a flood of never before possible applications are inevitable. One can easily imagine paying for Cable TV 1 minute at a time and only when you watch it, or paying for news articles 1 at a time as you read them, or cell phones paid only when in use, or paying for your electricity and other utilities as you use them, or even paying for your Uber 100 ft at a time. Imagine being paid your salary every 5 minutes as you work. These are all easy to imagine, but what life changing new killer app is coming that is not so easy to imagine?

Paul Fabozzi is CEO of walletBouncer. A Bitcoin wallet monitoring service.

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