Bitcoin Lightning Wallets Are Gaining Traction in 2019

Lightning-centric bitcoin wallets are gaining traction in 2019 and making small transactions affordable by reducing network fees.

The bootstrapped Spanish startup Bluewallet garnered 35,000 downloads so far this year, according to co-founder Nuno Coelho, a significant jump from the 5,000 users it had in 2018.

Coelho told CoinDesk the wallet’s built-in lightning marketplace, offering connections to external services like the crypto exchange ZigZag, the blog Yalls and games like Lightning Roulette, facilitates nearly 10,000 referrals a month. So far, BlueWallet users have completed more than 100,000 lightning transactions.

“The things we are working on now are to prepare the wallet for the next bull run,” Coelho said. “To allow users to have more control over the fees when the market will be with higher fees.”

After a year of operations, Bluewallet is currently raising its first round of venture capital. It is hardly alone. Competition across the marketplace is…