Company Name Lightspark
Founders: David Marcus and Kevin Hurley. Christina Smedley. James Everingham. Christian Catalini. Jai Massari. Tomer Barel
Date founded: April 2022; series A may 2022
Headquarter Location: Los Angeles, CA
Bitcoins held by the Treasury N/A
No. of Employees 45
Website: https://www.lightspark.com/
Is it Public or Private? Private Investigators
Kevin Hurley and team members at Lightspark Want to make bitcoin more accessible to institutions, everyday users and to all people.
This is why they’ve created Lightspark, a Lightning Service Provider (LSP) — and more — that offers enterprise-grade infrastructure that enables companies around the world as well as the customers for those companies to make payments globally using the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
“We want to carry on the vision that we originally had with Diem,” Hurley spoke to Bitcoin Magazine. “And that was to really open up the financial world, make it into something where you can send money as easily as you send data packets today.”
Hurley went on to explain why Lightspark built their platform using Bitcoin.
“Some of the learnings from [Diem] are that you really need something that’s truly decentralized, something that’s a neutral protocol and something with a lot of liquidity,” Hurley explains it. “These are key aspects to Bitcoin and part of what makes Bitcoin so special.”
What is Lightspark? work?
Lightspark considers itself a more than just a LSP because it offers a Software Development Kit (SDK)Vendors can use API services to create certain features and utilize specific services.
Lightspark SDK allows customers to easily and quickly access Lightning Network payments, without the usual headaches associated with this network.
“We try to abstract [away] all the complexity of Lightning,” Hurley, explained “We talked to a bunch of the companies that have been in the Bitcoin space for a long time and tried to understand why they weren’t using Lightning or why they had tried and given up on it, and we heard a pretty similar refrain from all of them — it was just too complex.”
In order to use Lightning, companies need staff who can manage and balance the liquidity of their Lightning Nodes. Lightspark allows companies to use the Lightning Network by using just a few short lines of Lightspark code. Lightspark manages all technical details in the background. Lightspark has many other useful features for institutions.
“We have compliance features built on top of our stack,” Lightspark helps companies comply with regulations, says Hurley FinCEN’s Travel Rule.
“We have AI built on top of our stack to make it so payments are extremely successful. We have Predict, which is like the Google Maps for Lightning. [It shows us] where traffic is backed up to help us route transactions more successfully. Then we start to tack on things like UMA or Universal Money Addresses, which allow you to send from any currency to any other currency,” He added.
Universal Money Addresses
UMA is one of the features that Lightspark has designed and made open source.
Lightspark is an application that allows businesses to provide their clients with a Universal Money Address. This address is a hybrid of a Cash App $cashtag Then, you can. email address (e.g., $yourname@yourwallet/bank/exchange.com).
A UMA allows users to send crypto and fiat in an easy, seamless manner.
Hurley explains how UMA builds on and is interoperable with LNURL The following are some examples of how to get started: Lightning Addresses. The only difference between LNURL (Local Number) and UMA, is that UMA allows you to use fiat as a currency. own unique way.
“You’re able to go from any currency to another currency using UMA,” Hurley, shared
“Let’s say I’m coming from Brazil, and I want to send money to someone in Mexico. Maybe I’m in Mexico visiting and I go to the 7-Eleven and want to buy something. I should be able to send from my native currency to Mexican pesos,” He added.
“With UMA, what happens is my Brazilian reals are converted instantaneously to sats. They’re streamed over Lightning and convert instantly from sats to pesos and pay out to the 7-Eleven.”
UMA is responsible for facilitating the transfer of data on compliance between Lightspark’s various institutions located all over the world.
The exchanges, neobanks, and other institutions that partner with Lightspark — all of which are regulated bitcoin/crypto custodians — have the proper money transfer licenses in their respective jurisdictions, which keep Lightspark and its partners in compliance with the aforementioned Travel Rule.
Lightspark Institutions’ Partner institutions
Lightspark made recent headlines after it signed agreements with Coinbase and Xapo. Nubank. As each new partner joins, so do more partners.
“They see the growth — especially when we onboard a Coinbase — and a lot of entities have come to us and been curious about what’s happening,” Hurley, said
“They see that big players are starting to get interested and starting to see real volume on it, and they want to be involved, as well. They don’t want to be left behind because they understand that this area is growing and becoming very important,” He added.
Neobanks that are more technologically advanced, and who want to differentiate themselves from traditional banks, have shown the most interest. Hurley did note that traditional banks were also paying attention.
“The benefit [of what Lightspark provides] applies to a J.P. Morgan just as much as it applies to Nubank,” Hurley, explained
“We’ve engaged with quite a few of them. They oftentimes will need to see others do it first,” He added.
“Once they start to see real adoption, I think there will be quick adoption by them, too.”
Hurley mentioned that the traditional reasons for many of these larger events are valid. financial Join us!
“Traditional financial firms have big pain points,” Hurley, explained
“They might have bank accounts in multiple countries, and, even within their own bank, transferring money takes days because they are transferring using SWIFT. They’re going from one entity in, let’s say, Argentina to one in Europe, and it takes them three to five days to transfer money. It means they have to set up correspondent banking. It’s a big burden on them and can be quite costly,” he said.
“I think they’re very excited to see something that can work more quickly, more efficiently and have better rails. It’s a net positive for everyone.”
Bitcoin Bullish, but Conscious Of Reality
Although Hurley and his Lightspark team are confident that Bitcoin adoption is going to continue growing, they also know that there are many people around the world who still feel uncomfortable with Bitcoin.
Hurley views Lightspark’s strategy as a means to increase Bitcoin adoption by keeping in mind the origins of its customers.
“To actually get real adoption and to keep increasing adoption, you need to meet consumers where they are, and a lot of consumers right now are comfortable with fiat,” Hurley, said
“Those folks probably don’t know anything about Bitcoin, and it’s going to take a while for them to be exposed to it. So, if you can abstract that away for them, allow them to use the currency they feel comfortable with, that helps get people on board and helps build adoption,” He added.
Hurley did acknowledge that others prefer to simply use bitcoin, and to do so in an unsupervised manner. However, Lightspark and their partners offer users the option to send bitcoins into a non-supervised wallet.
“Users can exit at any time from a custodian and go to noncustodian,” Hurley, said
He said that Bitcoin or Lightning does not currently have the capacity to reach the mass in a custodial way. That is why Lightspark as well the other companies with which it has partnered are crucial right now.
“You can’t onboard billions of users to Bitcoin and Lightning [non-custodially] today,” Hurley, explained
“Long-term that could be possible, and we are doing a lot of exploration into how to make that happen, because we feel like it’s vital to the ecosystem,” he said.
Hurley believes that for now the simple solutions provided by companies such as Cash App, Coinbase and Lightspark will encourage people to adopt Bitcoin.
“This article is not financial advice.”
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Source: bitcoinmagazine.com