Why Bitcoin’s Lightning Network is Beating Visa and Mastercard
According to recent data from Glassnode, the Lightning Network associated with Bitcoin (BTC) is much cheaper to use compared to traditional payment networks.
The median fee rate for sending value across the Lightning Network is only 0.0029%, which is 1,000 times cheaper than the cost of using payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard.
James Check, a Glassnode analyst, told Cointelegraph that the current median fee rate is 3,000 Satoshis per 1 BTC, which is equivalent to $0.84 for sending $28,800 worth of value.
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This rate is significantly lower than that charged by major credit card companies. The Lightning Network was proposed as a way to make Bitcoin a more effective payment method, and the data shows that it is fast and low-cost.
However, the network’s throughput could be questioned for payments above $1,000.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
