Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey — also the founder and CEO of United States-based Bitcoin (BTC)-supporting payments service Square — said that rolling out the Lightning Network on Square’s Cash App is a question of “when, not if.” Dorsey made his remarks during an interview alongside Elizabeth Stark, co-founder of Lightning Labs, on the Stephen Livera podcast Feb. 11.
The Lightning Network (LN) is a second-layer solution to Bitcoin’s scalability limitations, which works by opening payment channels between users that keep the majority of transactions off-chain.
In response to a question regarding possible LN support on the popular Cash App — which became the number one downloaded finance app on Google Play this December — Dorsey said:
“We have a massive seller network of businesses [of different sizes] […] We would love to make [Bitcoin payments] as fast and efficient and transactional as possible and that includes looking at our seller base and our register. It’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’”
Dorsey, who is well known for his conviction that Bitcoin will become the “native currency of the internet,” spoke during the podcast of his early fascination with the cypherpunk movement and his encounter with the “amazing, simple, beautiful” Bitcoin white paper in 2013, when Square was still in its early days.
Notwithstanding the “negative lens” that has filtered much of the awareness around Bitcoin, Dorsey said its spectacular brand traction and congruity with the internet’s core ideals have forged a unique resilience and lasting power for the coin. He set it apart from other cryptos, arguing that:
“It feels it’s the one that wants to be currency the most, versus others that are doing more general purpose things or distributed computing […] I think [the altcoin space] has generated some really amazing ideas, but I’m focused on currency and the transactional aspect.”
In November 2018, Square reported it had generated $43 million in Bitcoin revenue for Q3 2018, up from $37 million the preceding quarter. That same month, the company’s market cap surpassed that of Twitter.
Just last week, Dorsey took part in a community project demonstrating the functionality of LN, dubbed the “Lightning Torch.” The initiative entailed a series of transactions relayed between LN users, with each participant adding a nominal sum (10,000 satoshis, or ~$0.34) and passing it on to someone else they trust.
Last month, the Lightning Network passed a milestone capacity of $2 million and has a capacity of 656 BTC (about $2.39 million) at press time.
