Bitcoin Tech Booms: Lightning Data Defies Digital Gold Narrative

Discover the newest traits within the DeFi house. This article dives into: “Bitcoin Tech Booms: Lightning Data Defies Digital Gold Narrative”.

Ego Death Capital’s portfolio reveals adoption metrics together with $1.5 billion in Lightning-powered buying and selling quantity, as Block shocks the business with their 9.7% Lightning Network yield. 

While bitcoin treasury firms, debates about market construction payments, and strategic bitcoin reserve advocacy dominate the headlines in 2025, a development is quietly rising within the background: the success of Bitcoin expertise firms.

Increasingly acknowledged as digital gold and a long-term retailer of worth, bitcoin is way over only a shiny rock in our on-line world. As a software program expertise, Bitcoin is programmable and has unlocked a brand new paradigm of funds, custody, settlement and buying and selling prospects.

Nevertheless, some critics level to the empty blocks on the Bitcoin base layer and traditionally low transaction charges as implicit proof that Bitcoin is failing as a medium of change. Others declare that the Lightning Network has did not get mainstream adoption and even argue that it suffers from important privateness issues. But the other could also be true. 

New knowledge popping out of varied firms all through the business is beginning to paint a distinct image. Perhaps the Lightning Network has been so profitable in drawing transactions off chain and making them extra non-public that it’s exhausting to quantify success metrics with out firms concerned sharing the info.

But, quite a lot of Bitcoin start-ups and corporations utilizing bitcoin to construct out new monetary infrastructure are actually beginning to boast of their success metrics, claiming numbers that counsel there’s a robust product market match past treasury methods.

Jeff Booth, creator of The Price Of Tomorrow and co-founder of the Bitcoin-focused VC agency Ego Death Capital, instructed Bitcoin Magazine he doesn’t “think the general public has any clue with how fast the Bitcoin ecosystem is growing.” Adding that, “They keep on hearing treasury companies this and politics that, and they’re missing the forest for the trees.” 

Below follows a abstract of varied firms and tasks demonstrating Bitcoin adoption in important numbers, lots of them inside the Ego Death Capital portfolio. 

Block: Earning Big on Lightning and Bitcoin Payments

The distinction in views between the digital gold thesis and those who imagine in Bitcoin as a funds expertise was most just lately seen at Bitcoin Vegas 2025 the place Block, the mother or father firm of Cash App, disclosed that they’re incomes 9.7% yield off their Bitcoin Lightning node. 

Miles Suter, Bitcoin Product Lead at Block, instructed the reside viewers that “at the infrastructure layer, we’re earning nearly 10% bitcoin-on-bitcoin returns by efficiently routing real payments across the Lightning network. This isn’t yield from altcoin staking or reckless speculation; it’s from solving hard, real-time routing problems, and its real bitcoin-on-bitcoin returns from our corporate holdings via supporting real payments use cases.”

Besides Block’s gorgeous 9.7% determine announcement, which stood out as one of the crucial lasting impressions from the convention, Suter claimed that Cash App ranks “among the top bitcoin on-ramps in the U.S., accounting for nearly 10% of on-chain block space at any time,” including that in 2024, its Lightning utilization grew 7x and one in 4 of their outbound Bitcoin funds are processed on Lightning. These numbers spotlight Block’s development as a Bitcoin funds large, now maybe the commonest service provider funds terminal and shopper funds app that integrates bitcoin.

Ego Death Capital

Ego Death Capital has been investing in Bitcoin infrastructure start-ups since 2022, initially elevating a tactical 30 million greenback fund amid a growth in crypto and altcoin VC investments. 

“When we first raised money, we actually targeted 30 million because the ecosystem at that time was really early. We realized we had to lean into these companies to help them scale. There were a lot of big crypto funds at that time, but they were spraying money everywhere else. And it was largely the exact opposite of what we believed would happen on Bitcoin.” Booth recalled that “Bitcoin was a protocol. It was developing in layers and it was early. And if you realized that and leaned in to help those companies that were developing in the layers, helping the infrastructure be created, then you would accelerate that. You would accelerate what we saw Bitcoin being, a currency, a store of value, an entirely new network.”

“We don’t have a failure in that fund,” Booth stated of the agency’s first funding cohort, which included firms like Breez, Relai, LN Markets, Fedi, Wolf and Simple Proof. “That fund is just over three years old. It’s staggering. A number of those companies, I think three of those companies are already profitable — and profitable in bitcoin terms. So adding bitcoin to their treasury each month and growing incredibly fast.” 

Breez: Powering a Global Lightning Payments Network

Breez, based in 2018, is a self-custodial Lightning-as-a-service supplier that permits builders to combine Bitcoin funds into apps utilizing its open supply Breez SDK. By simplifying Lightning’s complexities, Breez has been driving widespread adoption throughout numerous industries. 

“Over 40 apps have already implemented our SDK in production or beta since we launched it less than 18 months ago. Collectively, ~1.5 million users now have access to self-custodial, peer-to-peer bitcoin payments through these apps. These apps processed over $4.5 million in gross transaction volume in 2024,” wrote Roy Sheinfeld, CEO of Breez, in a January 2025 weblog publish. 

The “Bitcoin Payments Report” by Breez and 1A1z, launched February 2025, added, “The Lightning Network now reaches over 650 million users; driven by integrations with mainstream products, new developer tools, and growing merchant adoption.” A month later Sheinfeld printed that “Lightning Pay’s user base has been growing with users moving a billion sats monthly.” Additionally, Breez’s integration with Klever Wallet introduced Lightning to “100,000 monthly active users,” as acknowledged in a December, 2024, weblog publish. 

LN Markets: Lightning-Fueled Trading Takes Off

LN Markets, launched in 2020, is a Bitcoin-native derivatives buying and selling platform, leveraging the Lightning Network for fast settlements and minimized counterparty danger. 

Its Lightning-native login interface demonstrates they’re on the reducing fringe of Bitcoin applied sciences and unlocks person expertise options that differentiate it from most different superior buying and selling platforms. The quick fee rails that end result from this deep integration with the Lightning Network unlock quicker settlement, decrease withdrawal charges and gives entry to smaller merchants all through the third world, with many customers in South America in nations like Mexico, Brazil and Colombia.

“Basically we’ve gone from 50 million in monthly trading volume to 1.5 billion last month in May,” co-founder Romain Rouphael instructed Bitcoin Magazine, including that they’ve gone from “one billion dollar yearly trading volume in 2023 to six billion last year to 12 billion this year.” Profitability can also be robust, with Romain stating, “We double our revenue each year and we double our EBITDA as well every year,” and “We are doing millions of Lightning transactions every year” These figures spotlight LN Markets’ robust and energetic person base in addition to Lightning’s scalability.

The change focuses on Bitcoin derivatives like a perpetual futures contract and an choices platform, traded in opposition to an artificial greenback that when settled is paid out in Bitcoin.

Relai: Europe’s Bitcoin Neobank

Relai, a Swiss-based cellular app based in 2020, streamlines bitcoin adoption for Europeans with a user-friendly, noncustodial pockets and brokerage service. Targeting newcomers, it emphasizes dollar-cost averaging and self-custody, making bitcoin financial savings accessible. 

Julian Liniger, co-founder of Relai, instructed Bitcoin Magazine “we are now exactly five years into the market. We started in the summer 2020, today we are roughly 50 full-time employees, we have raised around 20 million U.S. dollars, we have more than 500 thousand app downloads across Europe, and around 150,000 active users.” He added that, “Last year we did around half a billion of trading volume.” 

Liniger says they anticipate to realize round one billion in buying and selling quantity in 2025 and “eight digits” in income.

Madeira: A Bitcoin Economy in Action

The Madeira Bitcoin challenge, launched on the scenic island, seeks to determine a thriving Bitcoin-native financial system, drawing inspiration from Bitcoin Beach in El Salvador. Initiated with the assist of Jeff Booth and Madeira’s president Miguel Albuquerque, the challenge has adopted a bottom-up technique, encouraging retailers to simply accept Bitcoin by way of the Lightning Network for quick, low-cost transactions and the associated advertising upside. This method capitalizes on Madeira’s tourism-driven financial system, the place Bitcoin’s effectivity outshines fiat techniques, doubtlessly driving natural development.

“So, we went on Madeira and when we did the conference – in 2023” Booth recalled of the initiative, “ It took me a year to get 32 companies to accept Bitcoin. We were pretty proud of having 32 companies onboard. Fast forward a year, I think it’s over 250 companies accepting Lightning in Madeira. You can live in a totally full circular economy in Madeira today.” Organizations like FREE Madeira assist companies onboard Bitcoin and keep a BTCMap that whereas most likely incomplete, offers you a way of the adoption, boasting 150 energetic Bitcoin retailers within the small European island. 

Initiatives like Sovereign Engineering, a Bitcoin centric occasion for builders and entrepreneurs to improve their talent units and community add to the enchantment of the island, placing it on the map for top tech builders and entrepreneurs. The regulatory surroundings in Madeira additionally welcomes innovation, as a particular financial area inside the euro zone, a improvement which Booth says “it’s wildly exciting.”

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