Desiree Dickerson, Ryan Gentry: Lightning is Bitcoin

My guests are Desiree Dickerson and Ryan Gentry. They are working for one of the – in my eyes – hottest companies in the Bitcoin space. Lightning Labs was founded in 2016 by Elizabeth Stark and Olaoluwa Osuntokun. The Lightning Network is a second layer protocol on top of the Bitcoin network. We will be talking about the Lightning Network, what it is and what it is enabling, their most interesting products and about their outlook for the Lightning Network in 2021.

Our topics:

• Their personal Bitcoin stories
• Areas where Bitcoin is important today
• What is LND (Lightning Network Daemon)?
• The development of the Lightning Network since its start
• Building through quarantine
• Growing number of apps and Lightning services
• Lightning Pool, Lightning Loop
• Streaming money and Podcasting 2.0
• Lightning Network in 2021
• Atomic multipath payments
• Kraken integrating Lightning
• Does Lightning Labs hold Bitcoin as company asset

“The Lightning gaming community or Bitcoin gaming community, it’s actually a bunch of people who’ve never, ever owned Bitcoin, or don’t really know much about Bitcoin at all, are coming to these games. Cause they’re like, Oh, Hey, I can have fun. And I can earn this asset that everybody’s talking about. And so we’re actually onboarding a ton of new users to Bitcoin directly through these Lightning games. The growth is incredible. Just at the last e-sports tournament that we hosted there was, I think there were almost up to 15,000 transactions just during two hours.” – Desiree Dickerson

“A Lightning balance and a Bitcoin balance, will be viewed in the future as like having a checking account and a savings account. It’s just that your money that’s in your lightning balance is much easier and more accessible to be sent and paid for stuff. And it’s very cheap. It’s very quick. It works really well. And you don’t have to ask permission or wait for the bank to be open.” – Ryan Gentry