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Coinbase is poised to launch lightning network (LN). This is significant because of the long standing criticism against BTC's scalability and since LN has been in development for more than a year. 

![Coinbase lightning.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmNMuqWCdkKVqCFYbn22vGaMkAuBTLoEF7jgtP8HjubwCQ/Coinbase%20lightning.png)

Coinbase going live with LN is surprising to many because highly respected oracle of Bitcoin Andreas Antonopoulos weeks ago shared his expectation that Coinbase would not. 

*“I don’t think Coinbase will run Lightning, and I think there are many reasons why we’re not going to see regulated exchanges run Lightning Hubs,”* 
-Antonopoulos

Antonopoulos cited stringent regulatory pressures that rest upon Coinbase with respect to AML and KYC would make their implementation of LN unfeasible because of how Lightning enables trascations to occur without the traditional record keeping typical within the Bitcoin blockchain protocol. 

Suffice it to say with LN money can pass back and forth between nodes in a manner that does not require transaction "closure", in fact transactions can pass from one node to another on a pathway to the final destination, which makes KYC impossible and AML more difficult. 

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Antonopolous elaborated on this concern on Jan 21, 2018, in an interview with Adam B. Levine titled ["Let's Talk Bitcoin"](https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-352-lightning-in-real-life), and this interview is fascinating and informative, but WARNING this is 65 minutes. 

In that interview, Antonopoulos said: 
*"They have a fully KYC/AML-ed customer on one end of their connection, but if they receive a payment that’s going to that customer over the Lightning Network, they have no idea whether that customer’s the final destination… If they receive one coming in from that customer, they have no idea if that customer’s the origin… Which means their KYC just fell apart – completely fell apart."*

And he concluded this point by saying that beacuse of this criticism, Coinbase would be *"...if they do that they are in violation of those regulations, they MUST know the original source and final destination of every payment their routing, which means they cannot run a lightning network."*

In related news Bitfinex announced their own implementation of Segwit, which according to [Bitfinex's own 'Medium' post](https://medium.com/bitfinex/bitfinex-adopts-segwit-8e6c5d72fcf9), means significant benefits for users and bitcoin's development. 

*"By supporting SegWit addresses, Bitfinex is tackling three of the biggest crypto-enthusiast concerns: transaction fees, transaction speed, and total network capacity."*
-Paolo Ardoino, Bitfinex CTO

*"SegWit is the process of increasing block size limits by separating signature data from transactional data in bitcoin transactions. SegWit will also effectively fix transaction malleability. This process will also provide future for also Bitcoin development efforts, including the implementation of Lightning Network."*

My Thoughts:
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This is an enormous step forward in the scalability of Bitcoin and the resolution of the largest criticism against BTC, its fees and time delays in payment resolution. This growing network of Lightning nodes will dramatically improve speed, fees, and therefore functionality of Bitcoin. 

Critics have long said Bitcoin's "value" is lower than its price, and their arguments are nearly always centered on the issue of scale, and how scale was holding the functionality of BTC back, but no longer. 

Bitcoin is known, it is desired, it is attractive, reliable, secure and now it is scaleable. It is functionally instant, relatively free, and yet secure. The wider implementation of LN, starting with major exchanges like Coinbase, and even implementation of Segwit by Bitfinex represent an answer to the long standing criticism against Bitcoin, that it cannot scale adequately to be "peer to peer electronic cash". 

It can scale, it is scaling, fees and speed of delivery are being resolved. Bitcoin is stronger than ever, and 2018 is an exciting time for BTC holders. 

It is yet to be seen whether this will have a short term impact on the price action, and I am not a financial advisor, but as a holder of Bitcoin I am excited and I believe justifiably so. I am now more convinced that the future growth of BTC will be positive than ever, and that the future is bright for cryptocurrency investors, involved today. 

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