Elon Musk says lightning network ‘needed’ to scale Bitcoin for now
Elon Musk has jumped into the bitcoin (BTC, +1.27%) scaling debate on Twitter, saying that the layer-2 payments network Lightning is “needed” for now.
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"Layer count depends on projected bandwidth & compute, both rising rapidly, which means single layer network [e.g. Bitcoin alone] can carry all human transactions in future imo," the Tesla CEO tweeted Friday.
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Until then, however, Lightning will be necessary to provide the required bandwidth, he argued.
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The Lightning network is a layer atop the Bitcoin blockchain designed to enable faster and cheaper transactions by enabling user-generated channels for sending and receiving payments.
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Musk has also been responding to a Twitter discussion about bitcoin's energy usage, the reason cited for Tesla's recent U-turn on accepting the cryptocurrency as a method of payment.
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He proposed that the top-10 mining organisations post audits of the amount of renewable energy used in their operations as one way to tackle the issue.
Author
CoinDesk Analysis Team
CoinDesk
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