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Elon Musk Says Lightning Network 'Needed' to Scale Bitcoin for Now
A single-layer network like Bitcoin's could carry all humans transactions in the future, the Tesla CEO tweeted Friday.
Elon Musk has jumped into the bitcoin scaling debate on Twitter, saying the layer 2 payments Lightning Network is "needed" for now.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
- "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.
- Until then, however, Lightning will be necessary to provide the required bandwidth, he argued.
- 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.
Achieving truly decentralized finance – power to the people – is a noble & important goal.
— Name (@elonmusk) May 21, 2021
Layer count depends on projected bandwidth & compute, both rising rapidly, which means single layer network can carry all human transactions in future imo.
For now, Lightning is needed.
- 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.
- He proposed that the top-10 mining organizations post audits of the amount of renewable energy used in their operations as one way to tackle the issue.
See also: Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Now Has 10K Active Nodes and $69M in Locked Value
Jamie Crawley
Jamie has been part of CoinDesk's news team since February 2021, focusing on breaking news, Bitcoin tech and protocols and crypto VC. He holds BTC, ETH and DOGE.
