A few days ago, Google Cloud announced a new partnership with a company specializing in Bitcoin and Lightning Network.
This is Voltage, a company that provides services to companies that have payments at the core of their business, such as financial or fintech companies, and need a solution to save money transfer costs and cross-border payments, or create micropayment experiences for the web.
Voltage’s solution
Specifically, Voltage is a provider of Lightning as a Service (LaaS), a service launched in 2020 that allows people to have their own LN node without having to create and manage it.
In fact, Voltage’s goal is to provide companies with a Lightning Network solution that enables real-time payment settlement with near-zero fees.
Its solution helps solve three problems.
First, it helps companies handle money transfers via LN.
Second, it enables businesses to reach a global audience of customers using Lightning Network‘s interoperable standard.
Finally, it enables microtransactions, which do not work well with other payment systems because of the relatively high cost of individual transactions. For example, micropayments can be used to improve retention, reduce customer acquisition costs, and increase customer lifetime value.
Bitcoin LN: the collaboration between Google Cloud and Voltage
The collaboration with Google Cloud serves to expand the providers and hosting locations of its LaaS service. In fact, through this collaboration, customers can create Bitcoin and Lightning nodes on Google Cloud, in different locations around the world.
By using Voltage together with Google Cloud, customers can deploy their workloads globally.
By leveraging Google Cloud’s global network, Voltage is able to meet users’ needs more quickly, and offer a number of advantages.
First, the ability to serve a global audience in different regions of the world.
In addition, it allows services to be deployed on a leading cloud.
Finally, it allows for effortless execution of a Bitcoin or LN node.
Google Cloud and Bitcoin
In the official statement posted on the Google Cloud website they write:
“Google Cloud is leading the way in supporting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It has shown a dedication to this new technology and is helping bring it to a global audience, while also being a leader in cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes that Voltage can leverage to easily scale its platform. By using Google Cloud, Voltage can satisfy the complex requirements that enterprise adoption requires.”
In particular, the first two sentences of this paragraph sound like a full-fledged public statement in support of Bitcoin.
While they also mention cryptocurrencies in general terms, given that they also offer other crypto services involving altcoins, they had never before spoken in such clear terms in support of these new technologies.
Perhaps it is the specific case of Bitcoin that leads them to be so uncaring and so explicit, because nowadays saying that you support Bitcoin no longer necessarily means taking big risks.
However, it is worth mentioning that this is technical and not financial support, but nonetheless support it is. Moreover, Bitcoin is first of all a revolutionary new technology, and only later an attractive financial asset.
At this point, it is not impossible to imagine that sooner or later even the parent company, Alphabet, with its various Google-branded products may begin to integrate crypto services, perhaps starting with Bitcoin itself.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2023/07/12/google-cloud-supports-bitcoin-ln/