Visa vs Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

Visa vs Bitcoin’s Lightning Network: centralized payment network vs BTC’s dedicated second layer, how have transactions increased?

Visa vs. Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

Recently, it was announced that payments giant Visa increased the number of transactions by 16% over the previous year. Specifically, this is a total of 49.3 billion transactions in the second quarter of 2022. 

JUST IN: Visa processed a total of 49.3 billion transactions in Q2 2022, a 16% increase over the prior year.

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) July 27, 2022

“JUST IN: Visa processed a total of 49.3 billion transactions in Q2 2022, a 16% increase over the prior year”.

A wonderful performance that of Visa’s centralized network when compared with a good decentralized competitor, Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN), the second-layer solution for BTC transactions. 

Indeed, LN’s capacity exceeded 4,200 BTC last week. It now has more than 4,200 BTC locked within its protocol to enable faster and cheaper transactions. 

This is a +8% increase in locked BTC compared to the previous two weeks and +27% since the beginning of the year. 

Visa vs. Bitcoin’s Lightning Network: Morgan Stanley sees LN as superior

In comparing Visa and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN), US banking giant Morgan Stanley also commented on the matter last April, considering LN superior to Visa. 

Its commentary refers to a report by Arcane Research which states that LN enables users to transact instantly, registering a staggering 410% growth each year.

Not only that, in March 2022, more than 80 million people accessed Lightning Network payments via apps. This is because thanks to apps like Strike or Chivo, many BTC users are unaware that they are using LN for transactions. 

In contrast, the report states there were just over 100,000 LN users during the summer of 2021. 

Bitcoin with twice as much trading volume as Apple

Over the past month, it appears that not only LN and Visa have seen major increases, but Bitcoin and Apple (APPL) themselves appear to have seen better performances. 

In fact, despite the period of “crisis” in the current macroeconomic situation, the trading volume in the last 30 days of AAPL has shown +4% growth, while BTC trading seems to have grown twice as much as Apple itself. 

Tomorrow Apple’s quarterly report will be made public, which will decree the behavior of investors in the market.