Issue #1059: Lightning striking where it's needed most

The Lightning Network has been on fire lately. As the technology matures and it becomes easier to build user friendly experiences we're seeing an explosion of adoption. To date, may have wondered why there hasn't been much adoption from exchanges as it would add a lot of value for their customers. Well, this has been a good week for exchange adoption of Lightning from exchanges outside of the Western world.

Bitnob and IBEX Mercado both launched Lightning solutions for their clients in Nigeria and Guatemala respectively. This is beautiful to see because these two exchanges service user bases who benefit immensely from the utility provided by the Lightning Network. From what I've heard, these two exchanges were able to bring their Lightning products to market at a very quick pace to.

This makes one wonder, what the hell are Western exchanges waiting for? At the moment, the only exchange in the US that offers Lightning functionalities t to their clients is River. There have been rumblings of Kraken and Cash App working on launching Lightning capabilities for their users, but outside of that there hasn't been much news or rumors about others following suit. Maybe this highlights the downfalls of falling prey to the siren calls of altcoin trading gains that spread exchange engineering resources too thin. It will be interesting to see how that decision plays out in the long-term. Will the altcoin casinos fall behind as more and more users get more utility from exchanges that are focused and deliver Lightning faster? We shall see.

Final thought...

Houston traffic is booty.