Meta is Adopting Bitcoin Via Lightning Network

After years of trying to build their own stablecoin and progress down the line, Meta has now opted to join Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

Meta has also recently created LightSpark, a new firm backed by Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Paradigm, and Matrix Partners.

LightSpark is said to be working on a backend infrastructure for businesses interested in leveraging Bitcoin’s lightning network, which will enable features such as lower rates through payment options for smaller transactions like coffee purchases.

Lightning was also established with the goal of offloading some data analysis from the Bitcoin blockchain, which already has limited capacity.

While the early versions of Lightning were fraught with controversy and flaws, it grew in popularity as a result of its ability to send out little cash deposits at the same time without incurring exorbitant costs.

Blockstream is one of Bitcoin’s major infrastructure businesses and is now LightSpark’s most direct competition.

While Blockstream runs Core Lightning, one of the largest Lightning implementations, competitors like Strike already own and manage a Lightning-based payments platform that is used in over 200 countries.

Cloud-based Lightning node vendor, Voltage, joins the fray by allowing Lightning users to quickly set up and manage their own node.

Meta’s prior efforts to create its own stablecoin were led by David Marcus, the founder of LightSpark and one of the members of the PayPal mafia.

It was originally planned to manufacture multiple coins for various parts of the world, but the project was quickly dismissed, and it was instead decided to focus on one currency, the Libra.

When the Meta’s Libra Association was founded in June 2019, it drew a lot of famous people. PayPal, MasterCard Stripe, eBay, Visa, Lyft, Spotify, Uber, and Andreessen Horowitz were all members at the time.

The initiative, however, was greeted with opposition from Congress after a period of time. According to reports, regulators were concerned about the influence of such a massive corporation on the global financial situation.

On a legislator’s insistence, Mark Zuckerberg had to speak for hours before being urged to postpone his stablecoin initiative.

As the proposal continued to meet regulatory hurdles, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz referred to it as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

He responded by saying that he is fully aware that the German and European marketplaces cannot and will not grant access unless and until all regulatory risks are properly addressed, and that they must do everything possible to ensure the dominance of these private parties issuing currency remains under state control.

After spending secret sums in Diem, Meta is said to have a $27 billion annual research and development expenditure. Diem’s assets were finally sold to Silvergate for $182 million by the IT behemoth.

Meta now accepts bitcoin and has expressed interest in blockchain technology. It’s also experimenting with a new function that will allow its sibling social medium, Instagram to display NFTs.

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