Bitcoin fee spike spurs shift to Lightning Network: Binance and Coinbase line up

The recent surge in Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees has lit a fire under one of the largest crypto exchanges to upgrade to the Bitcoin Lightning Network. Following a second halt in withdrawals, Binance announced it would work on “enabling BTC Lightning Network withdrawals, which will help in such situations.”

To prevent a similar recurrence in the future, our fees have been adjusted. We will continue to monitor on-chain activity and adjust accordingly if needed.

Our team has also been working on enabling BTC Lightning Network withdrawals, which will help in such situations.

— Binance (@binance) May 8, 2023

The Lightning Network (LN, for short, or simply, “Lightning”) is a federated system for cheap, near-instant, payments built atop Bitcoin. When the Bitcoin mempool (the space that transactions gather before being confirmed) is full or busy, the lightning network is unaffected.

To date, several large crypto exchanges have integrated the Lightning Network, including Bitfinex, River, OKX, Kraken and CoinCorner. If implemented correctly, the Lightning Network would allow users to withdraw and send Bitcoin immediately from wallets, sidestepping the congested Bitcoin blockchain.

Fees on Bitcoin are rising, and there are still many Bitcoin (to fiat) exchanges that haven’t adopted Lightning deposits and withdrawals

Technical challenges are not the reason. Solutions like @RiverRLS exist that make integration fast and easy for any business. The issue is… pic.twitter.com/WR5u7cjMCx

— Sam Wouters (@SDWouters) May 8, 2023

The largest crypto exchange in the United States, Coinbase, is also warming up to the LN. Further to comments that CEO Brian Armstrong would integrate the LN soon, Armstrong finally sent Cointelegraph reporter Joe Hall $100 over the Lightning Network, demonstrating that he is familiar with the network.

European Bitcoin exchanges are also embracing the LN. Adem Bilican, the CTO of Swiss-based Bitcoin exchange, Relai, told Cointelegraph:

“We believe that Bitcoin is the best savings technology ever invented. But you should be able to spend and send BTC as fast and cheaply as possible. The Lightning Network is the best solution to tackle that, no matter how the on-chain transaction fees look.”

Swiss Bitcoin exchange, PocketBitcoin recently tweeted it would “get this Lightning thing started,” in response to higher and higher fees on the Bitcoin Basechain.

However, given that the LN is a relatively new solution in the crypto space, payment failure can occur. The network is growing and scaling organically, but more liquidity may help the network scale faster. Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex shed light on the situation:

The Bitfinex node is the most interconnected node on the entire Lightning Network. It is also the biggest, providing liquidity to most of the other nodes. Hence the chances of failure are extremely low.

True to form, the Bitfinex CTO tweeted in response to the high fees that users should ask their crypto exchange of choice to integrate LN. Binance and Coinbase are hopping on board, other large exchanges Gemini, KuCoin and ByBit have yet to announce or discuss implementing the LN.

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