Bitfinex records on Lightning Network

Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex, published the results of the crypto-exchange with a focus on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. 

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network: the overall situation at Bitfinex

The CTO of the Bitfinex crypto-exchange, Paolo Ardoino, shared on Twitter about Bitcoin’s Lightning Network (LN). 

So @bitfinex is averaging ~10k #bitcoin LN ⚡️ deposits/withdrawals per month.
Average amount is ~0.02 $BTC .@bitfinex nodes passed 1.2k $BTC cumulative.
“And yet it moves.”

— Paolo Ardoino 🍐 (@paoloardoino) January 26, 2023

Bitfinex operates both the largest and third largest Lightning node, now marking a record throughput on the LN network. 

That is an average of 10,000 deposits and withdrawals per month across Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, with an average amount of 0.02 BTC, the equivalent of $460 at the time of writing. Not only that, now, Bitfinex nodes have exceeded 1.2k cumulative BTC. 

Bitcoin’s Lightning Network: network capacity is above 5,000 BTC

According to the latest statistics, the capacity of the Lightning network is above 5,266 BTC.

#LightningNetwork https://t.co/Q0CaYRhLWD observed:
16,060 nodes
76,024 channels
5,266.073 BTC capacity ($121,055,900)

median node capacity: 0.005 BTC ($114.93)

past 24h:
+34 nodes +394 channels +0.361 BTC ($8,302)#Lightning #LN #bitcoin $BTC

— Lightning Network statistics ⚡ (@LNstats) January 26, 2023

As much as 400 BTC more than was revealed last September 2022. Speaking in dollars, the equivalent of what was nearly $92 million in September has now risen to over $120 million. 

The capacity of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network refers to the number of BTC that can be used within Bitcoin’s second layer, enabling increasingly fast and cheap transactions. 

Paolo Ardoino confident about LN 

This past summer, Paolo Ardoino described how BTC’s LN works. Not only that, while critics talk about Bitcoin’s scalability and speed issues, according to Ardoino, this continued rise in capacity seems, instead, to be telling of the masses’ confidence with a sharp increase in Lightning Network adoption. 

Ardoino previously predicted that it will be LN that will increase Bitcoin payments. 

One example that makes this theory possible is that of users of Chivo, the state-run BTC wallet in El Salvador (a country where BTC is legal tender), who do not know that they are using the LN network while performing their BTC transactions. 

In addition, Ardoino had also reported data from Arcane Research in which estimates showed that until the summer of 2021, there were only 100,000 LN users worldwide, compared to 80 million reached only in March 2022.