After a year of controversy and negative press over the Tether fiasco, Bitfinex recently became the first crypto-exchange to introduce the Lightning Network to facilitate faster Bitcoin payments in the industry.
However, the exchange quickly got into the action again after it announced a collaboration with Bitrefill, a collaboration that will allow its users to shop with BTC via a customized lightning channel.
In a recent interview with BlockTV, John Carvalho, CCO of Bitrefill, discussed the latest development and explained that Bitrefill has been assisting Bitfinex with its own lightning network setup and providing it liquidity on the backend. He added,
“On the technical side, to make all this happen, we decided to implement what we think its the world’s first dynamic B2B settlement over lightning so that we don’t need to have any outstanding balance on either side anytime we are transacting.”
Speaking about the implementation of Lightning Network, Carvalho said that he believes that the scaling solution “unlocked” a wide portion of the space for a circular economy in Bitcoin. The Bitrefill CCO believes that traders in the space would have more freedom in terms of using their digital assets for commercial use in their normal marketplace environment.
Despite the introduction of LN, its growth has been stalling for over the past few months and the number of active channels has decreased since March 2019.
However, Carvalho stated that he was not concerned with the current statistics of LN as he believes that it is a long-term venture. The CCO also claimed that the under-development of Lightning Network was slightly overblown by the industry.
According to Carvalho, this is the best time for developers to work and implement something new. He added,
“When we have the bear side of the market cycle, that’s the greatest time to build, so that exchanges and big players are ready before a new wave of adopters come in.”
