Non-Crypto Related-Figure Takes Control Of BTC Lighting Torch

The campaign for Bitcoin adoption is still well underway as Bitcoin’s Lightning Torch takes a tour around the world, changing hands from one popular person to another. The founder of Locabitcoins, Jeremias Kangas held the torch and then handed it over to the former contestant for Miss Universe, Rosa-Maria Rytti.

This is the second person outside of the crypto space to take control of the torch.

History of the torch

In January this year, the Lightning Torch relay began as just a stress test for Bitcoin’s new Lightning Network. The Lightning Network is an off-chain scalability function that will enable the Bitcoin network to increase its transaction processing speed as well as improve scalability for more of the crypto’s use cases.

When it started, the Lightning Torch passed through the social media’s of several big names in the crypto community and beyond. The objective of passing the torch around is to have every torch bearer contribute about 10,000 Satoshis to the event before they can pass it on to the next figure.

The Lightning Torch has been quite popular as it has had more than 270 bearers as of now, with only eight to go before the target total of 5 million Satoshi’s being achieved. At this stage of the relay, the network has around 7.875 nodes, 39,000 channels and a capacity of 1080 Bitcoins.

Expanding

The Lightning Torch has ventured outside of the crypto space before though so this is the second time it has passed over crypto lines, so to speak. In February, Jack Dorsey (Square, Twitter) held the torch as the first person outside the community to do so. In fact, Dorsey is currently working on the Square startup and has expressed intentions to implement the Lightning Network with his system.

Venezuela

The money that is being raised by contributors to the Lightning Torch is all going towards helping the people suffering in Venezuela in an initiative called Bitcoin Venezuela.

Venezuela’s situation seems to be getting more intense but with the help of cryptocurrencies, things could hopefully improve in the nation.