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- Mexico’s Total Play integrates Bitcoin Lightning Payments, offering users a choice between on-chain and Lightning payments, potentially boosting Bitcoin adoption in neighboring countries.
- Big players plan to utilize Bitcoin Lightning payments for corporate accounts, contributing to institutional Bitcoin adoption and leveraging the scalability benefits of the Lightning Network.
Global players have continued to shower their trust in Bitcoin (BTC) time and again, and this time, Mexico’s largest internet services provider has announced plans to integrate Bitcoin Lightning Payments. As the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to grow with more players joining, there’s an increasing focus on leveraging the Bitcoin Lightning Network to meet the scalability demands.
On Thursday, May 18, Total Play, the major internet service provider in Mexico announced the integration of Bitcoin Lightning payments at its end. Total Play enabled a payments dashboard that will allow users to choose between on-chain BTC payment or BTC Lightning payment. This development could further push the adoption of Bitcoin in other neighboring countries of Mexico.
The Growing Adoption of the Bitcoin Lightning Network
MicroStrategy chief Michael Saylor recently announced plans of leveraging the power of Bitcoin Lightning payments in the corporate world. This business intelligence firm is currently the largest corporate holder of Bitcoins and plans to come up with a product suite having a Bitcoin wallet and a Lightning address to cater to corporate account holders.
The latest development in Mexico hints at another effort toward the institutional adoption of Bitcoin. As we know, the Bitcoin Lightning Network is a Layer-2 scalability solution of the Bitcoin blockchain. It leverages micropayment channels to perform Bitcoin transactions more effectively and at lower costs.
The Lightning Network offers a temporary solution when on-chain transactions face technical challenges. In a recent development, leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced its intention to enable BTC Lightning Network withdrawals, providing an alternative method during periods of on-chain withdrawal suspensions.
Bitcoin Price Action
The world’s largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) has once again come under strong selling pressure slipping under $27,000 as of press time. The current selling pressure on Bitcoin came after growing expectations of interest rate hikes by the Fed next month in June. Speaking at the 2023 International Insurance Forum in Washington, D.C, Fed board member Philip Jefferson said:
On the one hand, inflation is too high, and we have not yet made sufficient progress on reducing it. On the other hand, GDP has slowed considerably this year, and even though the effect has been muted in the labor market so far, demand clearly has begun to feel the effects of interest rates that are 5 percentage points higher than they were a little over a year ago.
On the other hand, all eyes are currently on the US lawmakers’ call to increase the debt ceiling and avoid a potential default. Ari Bergmann, the founder of risk management firm Penso Advisors, expressed concerns over the liquidity crunch that could emerge afterward.
My bigger concern is that when the debt-limit gets resolved — and I think it will — you are going to have a very, very deep and sudden drain of liquidity. This is not something that’s very obvious, but it’s something that’s very real. And we’ve seen before that such a drop in liquidity really does negatively affect risk markets, such as equities and credit,
