Today we have some Bullish and interesting news for Bitcoin! Today I’m going to be diving into two segments - Bitcoin volumes reaching their all-time highs in Venezuela, and the Lightning Torch experiment, also known as the LN Trust Chain, that has reached over 139 people in 37 different countries including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey!
Firstly, let's look to Venezuela. If you haven’t been following the news, the country reached a new level of crisis. Nicolas Maduro, the previous leader, has been accused of severe mismanagement and running an authoritative regime. He also launched his state cryptocurrency the Petro which, unfortunately, was a big flop.
Maduro’s approach to running the country has caused the Venezuelan Bolivar to reach an inflation point where it’s predicted to hit 1 million per cent! Which is crazy, its come to the point where it’s almost useless. Last year it cost 14 million Bolivars to buy a chicken! On top of this, there are currently 80% of people living in Poverty in Venezuela, with most of them blaming Maduro.
So what do you do when your money has been deemed useless, and there’s no trust in the government? You look something that the Government has no control over. And that’s Bitcoin.
According to TrustNodes, Bitcoin volumes have surpassed all-time highs in Venezuela, rising above 2,000 Bitcoins for the first time this week. The peer-to-peer nature of the site allows Venezuelans to bypass any restrictions implemented on them.
2,000 Bitcoins is approximately $7 million worth that has been exchanged on a Bitcoin peer-to-peer exchange site, LocalBitcoins. While Venezuelans trade via centralized exchanges, it’s often difficult to measure because these exchanges are in neighbouring countries where they trade in Columbian Pesos or Brazilian real.
While trading volume is also up in Columbia, we’ve seen the most significant increases in Venezuela. I mean, in my opinion, if I were a Venezuelan, I would probably look to Bitcoin as well. Bitcoin may be volatile, but it’s not where inflated and unstable as the Bolivar. The Bolivar has fully collapsed, and the country is under sanctions which makes it hard to move fiat in and out of the countries. Bitcoin is outside of the Venezuelan Banking system and therefore can’t be blocked.
Trust Nodes also mentioned that Venezuelan authorities are also seizing gold or cash, which makes Bitcoin the perfect alternative.
Now onto some more positive news for Bitcoin. If you’ve been on Twitter, you probably would have noticed the Bitcoin Community engaging in an experiment known as the “Lightning Torch.” The idea is people on Twitter pass the “Torch payment” adding 10,000 satoshis (which is worth approximately 34 cents along to someone else. It’s called the LN Trust Chain since whoever receives the torch will continue to send the torch around as opposed to keeping the payment for themselves.
This experiment shows us that the LIghtning Network, while experimental and difficult to use, does offer a lot of new improvements as users have been able to pay others quickly without the need of a third party like Paypal or Mastercard. Over 139 people have participated in the torch, and they've come from over 37 different countries. Even Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, participated in the experiment.
He tweeted, Cool example of #BitcoinTwitter experimenting on the Lightning Network. Torch received now passing it along to 
When he was asked about Tron, he mentioned probably as a joke, love the movie.
So what are your thoughts on both of these situations, guys?
For Venezuela, do you think we’re going to continue to see a surge in Bitcoin use, and perhaps even other tokens?
And for the Lightning Network, it’s experimental and hard to use, so do you guys see Bitcoin’s future moving in that direction?
It’s Cindy with CryptoPig. Catch you guys around!
Disclaimer: Cryptopig content is written by a team of blockchain passionate people. We are not registered as investment advisors. Don’t take the information in this post as investment advice and make sure you do your own research before investing. Cryptocurrencies are a very risky investment, never invest more money than you can afford to lose.
