If you’ve sent bitcoin payments, you’ll noticed a hefty transaction fee. As recent as December 2017, people were spending (on average) $28 per transactions. Bitcoin’s high transaction fees and slow transaction speed have made it a less attractive payment option for microtransactions. One person tweeted that he was charged $16 to send $25 via his Coinbase account. But a new start-up, Lightning Labs, is trying to address those problems. Lightning Labs is backed by Jack Dorsey (CEO of Square) and he stands to win big if Lightning can pull it off.
As far back as 2014, Square accepted Bitcoin but it wasn’t publicly announced until November 2017. Square’s niche market are small business owners like coffee shops, clubs, hairdressers etc. whos revenue stream consists of a huge volume of micropayments, so it makes sense for his company to try and bring transaction costs down.
In case you missed it, CNBC covered this back in March: Jack Dorsey is among backers of blockchain start-up Lightning Labs