Fidelity Becomes First Financial Institution and 229th Lightning Network Torch Bearer

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Fidelity Becomes First Financial Institution and 229th Lightning Network Torch Bearer
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Fidelity Investments, one of America’s leading investment companies has received the Lightning Network Torch as the 299th to do so and the first financial institution to do so. Through its Digital Assets department, the company received the Lightning Torch from Wiz on February 22nd.

The “Lightning Torch” is basically a means of encouraging the use of the lightning network for payment by asking participants to make a payment of at least 10,000 Satoshis and pass it to another user. The LN Torch has been going round and Fidelity Digital received the torch as the first financial institution to do so.

Fidelity is one of the major companies that are expected to help the cryptocurrency market grow. The company announced in 2018 that it plans to launch a Bitcoin trading platform but not much has been said since then. With it ’s over 7 million customers, the company plans to significantly boost Bitcoin trading when it launches the platform.

Another platform similar to it, Bakkt, which is to be launched by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has been postponed at least four times since last year and according to ICE CEO will be launched later this year. Bakkt like Fidelity is expected to attract institutional investors into the industry.

Fidelity digital’s participation in the LN Torch exercise should also be a good thing for the Bitcoin lightning network as other institutions may also begin to participate to really encourage the participation of individuals and wider adoption of Lightning Network as an option for micropayments on the Bitcoin network.

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The Lightning network is a “Layer 2” payment protocol that operates on top of Bitcoin blockchain. It is expected to solve the problem of scalability for Bitcoin by ensuring fast payment between nodes. Although it is not very popular yet, it may hold the solution to some of Bitcoin’s shortfalls, mainly scalability issues.

Important people in the industry who have participated in relay include Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Tron CEO Justin Sun and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. Will Fidelity also be the last mainstream firm to take the torch or will it attract other financial institutions to participate in the exercise?