Lightning Labs Raises $70M to ‘Bitcoinize the Dollar’
“Taro helps bitcoin in numerous ways, including onboarding people to bitcoin through fiat where they can easily swap between assets,” Lightning Labs Founder and CEO Elizabeth Stark wrote on the company’s Medium page.
This is particularly important during periods of high inflation when people all across the world are seeing their currencies depreciate in value. Taro can assist in these instances by facilitating fiat to bitcoin rails.
“Further, as Taro uses bitcoin liquidity to route assets issued on the protocol, there will be greater demand for bitcoin on the Lightning Network,” Stark wrote. “As a result, bitcoin will route dollars, fiat, and everything in between. This is how we bitcoinize the dollar.”
Lightning, a new protocol that pegs bitcoin as the "internet's native digital money and system for value transmission," would transit assets like stablecoins through the bitcoin monetary network, according to Stark.
Taro uses Taproot, the most recent bitcoin upgrade, for "a new tree structure that allows developers to embed arbitrary asset metadata within an existing output" and Schnorr signatures for "improved simplicity and scalability," according to Business Development Lead Ryan Gentry on the Lightning Labs website.
Last year, BitPay CEO Stephen Pair dubbed Taproot a game-changer, claiming that it will encourage more people — particularly developers — to take advantage of features and capabilities that have long been available but have been underutilized.
Gentry goes on to say that Lightning Labs is in need of more assets after experiencing "an explosion of growth" last year, with a slew of new users from Latin America and West Africa signing up for the first time. According to Gentry, the business has "continually heard from people, developers, and companies in emerging areas" who believe that adding stablecoin assets to Lightning will give their communities more financial access.