Another Bitcoin Lightning Startup Is Working With Visa to ‘Fast Track’ Card Payments August 25 2020 - 10:29AM CoinDesk
With help from the Visa Fast Track program, LastBit will let users make any purchase with bitcoin, without needing the merchant to actively accept it. ...
Last month, Bitcoin Lightning startup Strike announced it would be working with the world payment giant Visa. Now, another startup in the same vein, LastBit, which just launched its app in beta, will be going through the same Visa Fast Track program.
This partnership will eventually make it possible for users to pay for items priced in U.S. dollars – but using bitcoin (BTC). LastBit founder Prashanth Balasubramanian told CoinDesk the company will also be releasing an app that works with euros in “a few weeks.”
Read more: Lightning Startup Zap Raised $3.5M for Bitcoin App Ahead of Visa Deal
Using bitcoin for 'day-to-day’ payments
LastBit’s end goal is to allow users to make Lightning payments to pay for just about anything. The user pulls up the LastBit app, loads bitcoin into it, then has instant access to a digital debit card for sending bitcoin payments. When the user sends a bitcoin payment, the vendor gets euros or dollars on the other side.
Bitcoin’s Lightning Network helps make bitcoin payments faster and cheaper. A few shops here and there accept Lightning payments, but they’re still not nearly as widely accepted as normal bitcoin transactions.
Read more: What Is Bitcoin’s Lightning Network?
Ultimately, LastBit wants to allow bitcoin users to walk into any shop and make a purchase with bitcoin, regardless of whether or not the merchant accepts it.
“We simply want to see the masses using bitcoin on a day-to-day basis. To do this, we have engineered arguably the most seamless interoperability between bitcoin and fiat, on top of the Lightning Network, that caters to the needs of both new and experienced users alike,” Balasubramanian told CoinDesk.
European and US expansion
Toward that goal, they’re working in both Europe and the U.S. to open up the possibility of sending bitcoin payments to vendors.
Funded by Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, crypto exchange Binance and database creator MongoDB, among others, the startup cut its teeth in the University of California, Berkeley’s accelerator program.
Now, as a “small company without millions in the bank,” LastBit has found Visa’s Fast Track program to be a good fit, said Balasubramanian.
Read more: This Visa Card Gives Bitcoin Rewards on Dollars Spent
“The Visa FastTrack program appeared to solve these problems for us to get to market faster and this was why we applied to their program despite being below their ‘minimum funding requirement’ of $1 million,” Balasubramanian said.
While LastBit is working with Visa for U.S. payments, it already has approval to get going in the European Union from MasterCard. That’s the focus for now, with the hopes of proving the product works.
“With a solid product, partnerships and notable investors […] behind us, we’re going to roll out our Bitcoin, Lightning and EUR interoperable payments layer in the EU to prove that this actually works and that a small company without millions can pull off a complex payments product to push for Bitcoin adoption,” Balasubramanian said.
DCG's Foundry will colocate 14,000 bitcoin mining machines in U.S. with focus on institutional buyers by Wolfie Zhao January 13, 2021, 11:10AM EST · 2 min read
* Digital Currency Group’s mining subsidiary Foundry is colocating 14,000 units of MicroBT’s WhatsMiner M30S
* As part of the colocation deal, U.S. mining farm Compute North will allocate 47 megawatts of capacity to power up the machines from Q1 2021
* Foundry aims to retain some of the machines for its own use and sell the remaining operating miners to institutional buyers
Foundry, the mining subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, has said it's partnering with a U.S. mining farm to colocate 14,000 bitcoin ASIC miner — a move that will focus in part on institutional buyers.
On Wednesday, Foundry said it will supply 14,000 WhatsMiner M30S units it procured from Shenzhen-based manufacturer MicroBT. As part of the deal, U.S. mining farm operator Compute North will allocate 47 megawatts of capacity to power up the machines beginning in the first quarter of 2021.
Foundry will retain an undisclosed portion of the hosted miners for its own use and plans to sell the remaining operating machines on Compute North's shelves to institutional investors.
The goal, according to the firm, is to streamline the pre-stage process for institutions so that they don't have to deal with issues such as negotiating bulk preorders from manufacturers, shipment logistics and sourcing facilities to host the machines. "This partnership will further strengthen our relationship as we make bitcoin mining more accessible to institutional investors and businesses in North America," said Foundry CEO Mike Colyer.
The two companies said that once the machines come online, investors can buy the operating miners from Compute North's shelves either with full payments or via loans issued by Foundry, with the machines serving as collateral.
Once fully deployed, the 14,000 units would be able to generate around 1.2 million terahashes per second (TH/s) of computing power, accounting for about 0.8% of bitcoin network's current total. At bitcoin's current mining difficulty, that amount of hash rate could potentially produce roughly 7.5 bitcoin in 24 hours, though factors such as luck and variance may shift those figures in practice.
Foundry did not disclose the initial cost of their procurement of the 14,000 units. MicroBT launched the model in early 2020 at $2,000 per unit.
But bitcoin's price rally in recent months has sent the prices of spot stocks for bitcoin mining equipment to new heights. For example, the spot inventory of MicroBT's WhatsMiner M31S, a less advanced model than M30S, is being quoted by the manufacturer's distributors at nearly $4,000 per unit.
The colocation deal follows MicroBT's announcement last September that it has set up its first offshore factory to scale up the supply chain for the North American market. Part of the partnership was that Foundry would be the entity financing hardware and first in line to receive new batches of MicroBT's M30S.
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