There's a quiet revolution going on in El Salvador and on Twitter
The media has always told us that people in El Salvador are not so happy about bitcoin becoming a "legal tender", to the point of even organizing street protests.
Now, it may very well be that a very vocal part of Salvadorans is of this opinion. But the cold statistical data also tell us the other side of the coin, that is, what the other part of the population that on the contrary is in favor of this innovation is doing, far from the media spotlight.
Glassnode, our favorite source of crypto market data, has noticed that some interesting metrics are showing a new trend that concerns precisely an increase in the adoption of bitcoin no longer as a "store of value", but just as an exchange currency.
The trend is influenced by both the new Salvadoran legislation and the introduction of bitcoin into Twitter's payment system.
Either way, it seems that people are really starting to use bitcoin as currency.
Where does this data come from?
Both El Salvador and Twitter have integrated a tool called the Lightning Network into their systems, which allows bitcoin network transactions to have enough speed to work in the real world as a means of payment.
Now, Glassnode is noticing a sudden and now visible increase in the use of the Lightning Network, to the point that it has decided to include metrics related to it in the periodic updates that we provide a summary of on Telegram every Tuesday.
The increase in the use of the Lightning Network is related to the increase of bitcoin transactions of "currency" type and not only for trading or deposit in wallets. Hence their importance to Glassnode.
Below we show the first graphs that Glassnode has published.
As you can see, the data testify to the following:
An increase in nodes (computers) connected to the Lightning Network:
An increase in payment channels (blocks of transactions between two addresses):
An exponential increase in capacity (bitcoins worth about $127 million were added to the network in September alone, as shown by the spike to the right of the graph):
Overall, the data seems to suggest that, when given the chance, people are starting to actually use bitcoin as a payment system. And that adoption steadily increases over time.
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