Image of The Week, April, 1 — 5: The Street, Coinspeaker, Bitcoinist and Others
Can the Bitcoin Lightning Network Revolutionise Online Publishing? (News BTC)
The experiments with Lightning Network, which is primarily used on the main Bitcoin blockchain to reduce the transaction burden, continue. News BTC says that there are huge monetization opportunities hidden in the technology for online media and publishers. Lightning Network with its fast and cheap transactions can become a great alternative to those readers, who don’t want to pay for the subscription and would like to read single articles instead. And although no major media has embraced this kind of Bitcoin micropayments yet, the potential symbiosis of Lightning Network and media in future may improve the overall quality of online journalism and become the next step to common BTC adoption.
Elon Musk Unveils His ‘Fav Cryptocurrency’ (Coinspeaker)
The founder of Space X and Tesla has publicly expressed his positive attitude to Dogecoin, noting earlier that the token has a “quite brilliant structure”. Elon Musk has also become a winner of the Twitter poll for the best potential CEO for the digital currency, although there were none other than Charlie Lee and Vitalik Buterin among his competitors. However, Musk later confirmed that he’s not going to head any crypto company in near future and warned his followers about the possible risks of “weird invisible money that only exists online”. Some time ago there were some rumors circulating that it was Musk who created Bitcoin, but Tesla CEO denied the speculation.
Ukraine’s Capital Kiev May Soon Accept Bitcoin For Public Transport (Bitcoinist)
Authorities in Kiev came back to the discussion of implementing the payments in BTC to the city’s transport system after the successful launch of the prepaid card that provides access to all forms of public transport in the city. The issue was discussed for the first time almost a year ago, but the bear market has done its job then. The success in e-ticketing in Ukraine should aid the BTC adoption process as well. There are also future plans to introduce a single Bitcoin ticket for all modes of public transportation in Kiev. Right now Argentina is the only country known to allow Bitcoin as a means of payment for topping up the credit balance on travel cards.
Cryptocurrency Comeback Could Be Benefiting Semi Stocks (The Street)
Following the crushing collapse of Nvidia (NVDA) and Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) in early 2019, their stocks can start going up again after the recent 20% bounce of Bitcoin and Ethereum. At the moment, researchers have noted a clear correlation between the volatility on the crypto market and stock prices of semiconductor giants. The increasing price of main cryptocurrencies can possibly revitalize the mining activities all over the world which will lead to the growing demand in high-powered hardware that is manufactured by the abovementioned chipmakers.