Spain’s Largest Bank Joins List Of Financial Institutions Exploring Bitcoin

Santander, Spain’s largest bank, recently announced the start of a Digital Assets 101 series for customers and prospective investors. Bitcoin advocates were impressed with the bank’s writing, latching on to Santander’s introduction to bitcoin’s Lightning Network as an example.

The Lighting Network is a layer built on top of the Bitcoin Network that facilitates instant and cheap bitcoin payments. The Santander report estimates that the lightning network can facilitate over a million transactions per second, compared to 20,000 per second for traditional card payment networks like VISA.

Amboss CEO Jesse Shrader cited Mcdonalds and Starbucks
SBUX
as well-known companies who have adopted lightning but said they did so in response to El Salvador’s Bitcoin Legal Tender law.

Shrader told me that companies like “MicroStrategy and Santander are recognizing the potential of lightning based on the technology,” rather than adopting it out of necessity for compliance purposes.

MicroStrategy’s executive chairman and former CEO, Michael Saylor led the charge to use bitcoin as MicroStrategy’s primary treasury reserve asset. MicroStrategy has since announced its intent to launch enterprise lighting infrastructure and solutions in 2023.

The Lightning Network is a promising technology that could help to address some of the challenges facing bitcoin, such as scalability and efficiency. It has the potential to make bitcoin more accessible to a wider range of users and make bitcoin more suitable for use in micropayments. As the Lightning Network continues to develop, it is likely to become a more widely used and accepted way to make payments.

It’s been quite a month for bitcoin with the multiple EFT applications, positive price action and Santander’s new found interest. This shifting sentiment towards bitcoin may be an indication of increased institutional demand, a sign that tides are once again turning in the tumultuous market that is bitcoin.