Bitcoin (BTC) Bounces to $43,000 As Lightning Network Capacity Hits all-Time High
The world’s largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin has made good advances over the last weekend. As of press time, Bitcoin is trading 3% up close to $43,000 with its market cap pushing past $800 billion.
Today’s breakout is important in the matter than Bitcoin has managed to breach its 50-day moving average of $42,500. If Bitcoin manages to sustain above these levels for 24-hours, we could be seeing further upside this week ahead.
More importantly, the recent move suggests a breakout from the downtrend witnessed since November. Furthermore, the RSI levels also seems to be giving a breakout hinting at further price action to the north.
Another important development that’s currently lining up is that Bitcoin’s layer 2 scalability solution, the Lightning Network has touched a new all-time high with a staggering 3,400 BTC locked worth $141 million.
The Bitcoin Lightning Network facilitates near zero-fee transactions and has witnessed strong growth over the last year. The Lightning Network capacity has grown by 3x over the last year.
Launched back in 2018, the Bitcoin Lightning Network aims to solve scalability issues and allows users to use it by locking up a sum of Bitcoin on the blockchain. It also handles smaller off-chain payments and upon completion of the transactions, the network sends out the payments to the Bitcoin blockchain. This helps into reducing network congestion significantly along with lower gas fee.
Additionally, some big market players are also getting into using the Lightning Network. Jack Dorsey’s Block Inc announced the integration of Lightning Network to its Cash application using its native open-source Lightning Development Kit. This means users of Block Inc’s Cash App will be able to perform near zero-fee transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Over the weekend, Bloomberg Intelligence published its report stating that they continue to remain bullish on the Bitcoin prospects going ahead. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mike McGlone writes that Bitcoin still holds the potential to touch $100K levels.
Bloomberg mentions that unlike gold, the supply elasticity for Bitcoin and Ethereum remains negative. The report adds: "The bottom line for most commodities is that rising prices thwart