Authors: Martin Betz, Daniel Wingen, Jonas Gross The Bitcoin Lightning Network has been designed as a global payment network. However, unlike traditional payment networks, Lightning not only involves messaging, i.e., the exchange of payment instructions but also immediately involves a final bilateral settlement. Thus, each successful payment over the Lightning…

Authors: Dr. Jonas Gross, Jonathan Knoll, Denis Scheller In the first two parts of our article series, we showed what the Bitcoin Lightning Network is, what it can be used for, and how to set up a wallet and perform transactions. In the third article of the series, we focus…

by the Digital Euro Association, CBDC Think Tank and worldwide CBDC experts How should a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) be designed to provide value for society? We are thrilled to announce the release of our CBDC Manifesto at the CBDC Summit in Washington D.C., a collection of five…

Authors: Dr. Jonas Gross, Jonathan Knoll, Denis Scheller As explained in the first part of our article series, the Bitcoin Lightning Network enables low-cost, real-time payments. To conduct a payment it typically only requires the user to scan a QR code with a Lightning-supporting application. The payment is then executed…

Insights from the crypto roundtable at the German Bundestag Author: Jonas Gross On September 30, I was invited to participate in the second crypto roundtable initiated by the German Free Democratic Party (FDP), in particular by Frank Schäffler. Topic of the discussions was the upcoming crypto regulation in Europe, namely…

Authors: Dr. Jonas Gross, Jonathan Knoll, Yannic Fraebel The Bitcoin Lightning Network is becoming more and more popular. The spread of Lightning is progressing relentlessly: there are now more than 4,800 bitcoins in the Lightning system, equivalent to more than USD 90 million. In addition, there has been an increase…

Authors: Philipp Sandner, Agata Ferreira, Jonas Gross, Maximilian Forster, Serkan Katilmis Circle launched the US dollar stablecoin USDC. The market capitalization of USDC has grown to a significant size of more than $50B. As of today, there is no euro stablecoin of a similar size. Now, Circle has announced plans…

Working at a university, dozens of people ask us: “How can I get into blockchain? What do I have to study?” To respond to this question, we now took the time and developed a 10-day program to onboard people interested in Bitcoin, crypto assets and blockchain technology in general. The…

Authors: Philipp Sandner, Jonas Gross The digital euro is not a monolithic project. On the contrary: The fields of application are broad, and possible solutions are diverse. This article provides an overview of use cases, application domains, and infrastructures for the digital euro that differ significantly. A comparison with solutions…