Running Hal Finney

For years, Bitcoiners pushed exchanges to adopt Lightning.

And guess what? It worked. Public Lightning volume is up 266% in about a year.

A few interesting insights from our new @River report:

Our previous Lightning research in 2023 showed a 1212% increase in transactions.

Many of these were low value, as people experimented with new apps & business models.

Now, a new wave of bigger volume has come in, driven by exchanges.

We used the same methodology for our estimates as in 2023, but instead of having data on 52% of public capacity, we now got up to 79.4%

A massive thank you to Acinq, @Alby, Bitfinex, @Breez ⚡️, C=, @LNBϟG, Kraken, LQWD, NiceHash, OKX, Cyberdyne, Sunny Sarah, @THNDR, and @Wallet of Satoshi for sharing data.

The Lightning industry continues to grow

We’ve updated our map, adding 46 new companies and removing 12.

We expect Lightning to continue growing:
- On-chain fees remain low, slowing adoption.
- USDT on Lightning may increase activity.
- Dozens of scaling proposals continue to build on Lightning.

More Lightning + Bitcoin adoption trends in our new report 👇
https://blog.river.com/bitcoin-adoption-2025/

10 years ago on this day, I built up the courage to give my first presentation about Bitcoin.

It was quite the rollercoaster 😅 but more rewarding than almost anything I've done in my life.

Let me tell you 👇

Someone in my class asked if I'd be up for presenting at an innovation event for travel agency Thomas Cook.

I'd never given a public presentation before, but I reluctantly gave it a shot. My gut told me to just do it.

I spent days on my slides and rehearsing. The slides looked terrible, and presenting to ~25 people for an hour didn't go much better. They looked at me like I was an alien.

About 15 mins into my presentation, my laptop, which had been struggling for months, crashed. It took me another 10 mins to get it back up 😬

After the presentation, I got a bunch of questions and probably some sighs of relief that it was over.

But I felt exhilarated.

I had never felt the thrill of presenting before, and I loved it, despite being an introvert.

Even though I knew I did a poor job, I realized I could get way better.

Over the next years (2015-2018), I gave 100+ presentations about Bitcoin and the blockchain at all kinds of public events, in board rooms for private companies, etc. Zero nerves when I get on stage now, all excitement.

As a thank you from Thomas Cook I got a gift card for €200 to spend on their website.

I tried to trade the gift card for cash (student life), and the best I could get for it was €100.

Instead of putting it towards a new laptop, I put it into 0.13 BTC, worth $12669 today.

That's an amazing amount for a bad presentation, but it's nothing compared to how much Bitcoin and all of the people I've met in this space have enriched my life in so many ways.

Since first joining River 2 years ago, I was always hoping we’d do proof of reserves one day. Many Bitcoiners just aren’t ready to self-custody yet.

Super pumped to see it come to reality!