Bitcoin Lightning Network Capacity Touches All-Time High, Beating Market Bearishness

Bitcoin’s BTC/USD price may have eroded nearly 16% in the last 30 days, but Lightning Network’s Capacity continues to grow and has now touched a new all-time high.

What Happened: Lightning Network Capacity touched an all-time high of 3,915.34 BTC recently. At press time, its capacity was at 3,903.33, according to data from Glassnode.

Bitcoin Lightning Network Capacity — Courtesy Glassnode

The spike in the capacity comes even as Bitcoin declined from $37,713.27 at the beginning of the month to $31,661.34 at press time. 
See Also: Best USDC Interest Rates

Why It Matters: Lightning Network is a second-layer technology focused on transactions. Capacity refers to the total amount of Bitcoin locked in the network.

Lightning Network payment nodes open payment channels with each other. As transactions are made across channels, the channel balance is reflected without the need to broadcast a transaction on-chain, effectively creating a second layer on top of the Bitcoin network. 

The network was proposed by Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja in a draft paper titled “The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments” dated January 2016.

More recently, the Lightning Network is being used in El Salvador, the first country to declare Bitcoin legal tender.

Its usage quadrupled last month after El Salvador and Jack Dorsey-led Block Inc’s SQ adopted the technology

Read Next: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin Spike Alongside Stronger Stocks: Time For Crypto To Finally 'Play Catch-Up?'