Microtransactions news
Solitaire, Counter-Strike, Snake: How casual gaming could be a ‘huge’ Bitcoin on-ramp
You can now play Solitaire, Snake, and even Counter-Strike to earn Satoshis, a tiny fraction of Bitcoin (BTC). Cointelegraph spoke to executives at Thndr Games, a play-to-earn (P2E) company built around Bitcoin, and Zebedee, a gaming platform that will “Transform gaming with the power of Bitcoin.” Thanks to the Lightning Network (LN), a layer-2 payment solution built on top of Bitcoin, instant microtransactions of Sats can quickly pay out to gamers across the globe. “This genuinely fixes a need in gaming,” Ben Cousens, chief strategy officer at Zebedee, told Cointelegraph. Zebedee offers Bitcoin and LN support for popular games such …
Adoption / Sept. 19, 2022
Bitcoin Lightning Network capacity crosses 3900 BTC marking a new ATH
Unwithered by the ongoing bear market, Bitcoin’s (BTC) underlying architecture continues to outperform itself — further securing, decentralizing and speeding up the impenetrable peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The same holds true for the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN). The Bitcoin Lightning Network capacity attained an all-time high of 3915.776 BTC, as evidenced by data from Bitcoin Visuals, displaying a commitment to the cause of improving BTC transaction speeds and reducing fees over the layer-2 protocol. The Bitcoin LN was first implemented into the Bitcoin mainnet in 2018 to address Bitcoin’s infamous scalability issues and has ever since been able to maintain an …
Adoption / May 30, 2022
Bitcoin transaction fees briefly doubled yet remain exceptionally low
Got some Satoshi to send or Bitcoin (BTC) wallets to reorganize? It’s increasingly cheap to do so. According to an Arcane Research report, Bitcoin “transaction fees have stayed low since July 2021, showing no signs of rising.” There was, however, a small bump in transaction fees last week. Shown as a small jump at the tail end of the graph, clustering of the mempool pushed “up the average transaction fees per day over the past seven days to $691,000, a doubling since last Tuesday.” Nonetheless, the doubling in transaction fees is insignificant: transaction fees remained in a low range. Miners …
Adoption / March 9, 2022
Growth hacker uses crypto to help the unhoused
Before the 2017 bull run, growth hacker Giacomo Arcaro often slept in his car. Now an entrepreneur who speaks at crypto conferences and forums, he is looking for ways to promote adoption and help those financially struggling as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Last weekend, Arcaro prepared to issue up to $50,000 in Ether (ETH) crypto loans to homeless and unhoused people in New York City. After speaking with some of the roughly 80,000 individuals in the city’s homeless population on a different occasion — and giving away some Bitcoin (BTC) in the process — he said many …
Business / March 29, 2021
OKEx to accelerate Bitcoin transactions with Lightning Network
Global cryptocurrency exchange OKEx is moving to cheaper and faster Bitcoin (BTC) transactions with its upcoming Lightning Network integration. According to a Tuesday announcement, OKEx’s Bitcoin Lightning Network will be integrated “in the coming quarter,” making OKEx a participant node in the Lightning Network. The integration will allow OKEx users to select the Lightning Network option when depositing and withdrawing BTC, intending to decrease transaction fees and times. The Lightning Network is a second-layer scaling solution and payment protocol based on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. The protocol was suggested by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in 2015 in an …
Decentralization / Feb. 2, 2021
Fortnite Meets Bitcoin Lightning Network in New ‘Lightnite’ Video Game
Bitcoin-enabled (BTC) games startup Satoshis Games announced the development of a Fortnite-like game with built-in Lightning Network microtransactions dubbed Lightnite on Oct. 19. Shoot to earn Bitcoin Per the announcement, all in-game interactions between players trigger a monetary reward or penalty for the user. Satoshis Games provides some examples: “In simple words, players earn Bitcoin by shooting other players and lose Bitcoin when they get shot.” Furthermore, some in-game items have a Bitcoin value and can be picked up from dead players and the game’s store allows players to purchase items with fiat money or BTC microtransactions. The player’s balances …
Bitcoin / Oct. 21, 2019