Bitnob Joins The Lightning Network
By: Bernard B. Parah
Tags: Bitnob, Payments, Bitcoin, Lightning Network

While Bitcoin has seen remarkable growth in recent years since 2017, this growth came with its own challenges, the most prominent being transaction fees. How do you get Bitcoin to more than a Billion people if a few million have to pay so much in fees to use it?

This resulted in what is now known as The Bitcoin Civil War (2015- 2017) which you can read all about here https://www.amazon.com/Blocksize-War-controls-Bitcoins-protocol/dp/B08YQMC2WM

In the end, the community chose to go with a solution that allows the Bitcoin base layer to maintain its security, where anyone can build on top of a secure layer using smart contracts. One of such applications built on this is called the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The Lightning Network can handle at least 1 million transactions per second, beating the combined speed of Visa and Mastercard.

For the first time in history, payments can be made instantly on a secure network, without any counter-party risk, across the world and today I am excited to announce that we are part of an elite group of companies that can achieve this with the integration of Bitnob into the Lightning Network. We have taken another step towards increasing access to a fair, permissionless, and open monetary network.

But first the back story!

Sometimes you need to experience some problems personally to appreciate their enormity.

When you’re not able to make a purchase because you come from a certain part of the world; when you’re restricted from taking part in economic activities or; when you lose all that you have worked for due to the decisions of a few — the reality of financial exclusion hits hard. People living in emerging markets experience this regularly.

All along, one of the fundamental missing pieces was a lack of a credible and superior alternative to fiat currency. Then came Bitcoin: Permissionless, censorship-resistant, and provably scarce.

An alternative to central banking and gold put together in a work of genius. Bitcoin has gone through many phases but gained prominence when a lot of people came for the speculation, hoping to make a quick buck. In the midst of all that, different people around the world found different uses for it beyond speculation.

They found out that they could make payments with it, send money back home, use it as a hedge against inflation, and in some extreme cases as a way to have total control of their money. I believe most of these use cases were a result of their personal experiences and how this solved a real problem for them.

Again, this may sound like fiction or overkill if you’ve never had the need for it- but whatever your perspective, we enjoin you in celebrating with us as we connect the world to Africa in a superior way. Our users, starting with Nigeria and Ghana can send money to and receive money from the US (UK and Europe coming soon) instantly and for almost free and can withdraw to their local accounts.

Remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa is a ~$40B yearly market, unfortunately, the fees take a decent share of these transactions thereby reducing the value people receive. For a region where millions depend on remittances to send children to school, sort out medical emergencies, and put food on the table, It is important that money moves easily and cheaply for them.

What Does This Mean For Us?

Different people have different definitions of freedom. For some, it’s the ability to use their hard-earned money to exchange value with anyone across the world, for others it’s the feeling of having full control of their wealth which is easily transferable across borders, the one thing they can truly own.

For us, it boils down to FREEDOM. The ability to have a global account, I mean an account you can use anywhere in the world is a massive leap. A gradual peaceful revolution that enforces our rights where those saddled with the responsibility of doing so have failed.

Kehinde doesn’t need to save $500 before sending money back home. The same way he’d pay for a cup of coffee in New York City is the same way he can now casually send $10 back home in Nigeria.

Abena might miss her little cousin’s birthday but she can always get cakes delivered to her in Accra, paid for from her London apartment.

Wahab, the digital nomad, now has a wallet he can use anywhere he travels to.

Journey So Far

When we came out of private beta in January, we had just processed a little over $60k in volume. Today, with your help, we have done millions of dollars in transaction volume, even when things seemed bleak, the resolve to hold onto better money kept us going.

What We Currently Have on Offer

We started with a feature that helps you automate your Bitcoin purchases using dollar-cost averaging, helping you build your Bitcoin holdings from as little as $1. The ability to buy, sell, send and receive Bitcoin both on-chain and via lightning Free and nearly instant remittances For those having emergencies, they have the option to take a loan using their Bitcoin as collateral Sending and Receiving USD from other users on the app at no fees Withdrawals to the bank and mobile money accounts in Ghana and Nigeria with more coming soon

As a company that aims to make a global impact, we built and operate our own bitcoin and lightning infrastructure, allowing us to independently vote on protocol changes and verify transactions on the network. This gives us the ability to build out services that make it easy for anyone to build financial services on Bitcoin on a global scale.

I would like to thank my amazing teammates at Bitnob, who wake up every day with a sense of service and dedication, knowing that they are in the middle of a storm but keep pushing on. I may be the face you see, the voice you hear but they’re the OGs and I find it really inspiring that just 7 months ago, some of them came in as interns, first time in tech but they’ve been able to play a huge role in making this a reality. Salute

Our community, some call them The Nobs, some Nobles. They have been amazing, cheering us on. Their stories are inspiring, the one line ‘Rooting for you guys’ we receive cannot be bought. We love you, we thank you.

Special thanks to the Lightning Labs team whom we’ve enjoyed working with, they were patient with answering our questions and sharing their learnings. Thank you Elizabeth ‘NPgU’ Stark, Ryan Gentry, Alex Bosworth and the team.

Thank you to Tim Akinbor for keeping it real since the early days and performing the 1st lightning remittance in Africa in 2018, this must be a special day for you I imagine.

Thank you to our investors and friends who still are always there in times of doubt

We will keep on giving access to the lightning feature on a rolling basis, you can apply in the app. We are very excited to be doing this!