The renewed and increasing interest in Bitcoin is showing its impact by rising transaction fees in recent weeks.
Vietnam’s oldest Bitcoin Exchange VBTC has taken steps to ensure that their clients are still able to take custody of their purchased Bitcoins without necessarily “paying an arm and a leg” to transfer them out of the exchange into the safety of their own wallets.
Besides the – increasingly pricey – ability to transfer their Bitcoins via a single on-chain transaction to the determined address, users can now also choose for “low urgency” transactions to batch their withdrawals with other users and save up to 80% of the withdrawal cost.
Furthermore VBTC introduced the ability to withdraw Bitcoins held on the platform directly via the Lightning Network; Bitcoin’s payment layer which runs atop the main chain and provides fast & cheap transaction capabilities.
Currently VBTC is pricing Lightning Withdrawals at just 1,000 Satoshis (+0.2% volume amount), while an instant Bitcoin main chain withdrawal comes at 100,000 Satoshis (which is at time of editing this article about 32-33$).
VBTC is Vietnam’s oldest Bitcoin Trading Platform and currently Vietnam’s only “Bitcoin-only” trading platform.
BitcoinVN (mother firm of VBTC) Co-Founder Dominik Weil commented:
“Over the past two years there has been a lot of experimentation in terms of Lightning in the local Bitcoin community; Saigon was even the place which saw the installment of Asia’s first Lightning ATM a couple of months ago.
As Bitcoin moves rapidly in its next phase of adoption cycle as new global monetary reserve asset it becomes increasingly crucial to put more resources into building out the infrastructure on the higher layers atop the base protocol.’
Quote from Elizabeth Stark, Lightning Labs CEO:
“We believe bitcoin has so much potential for billions of people around the world, and VBTC’s Lightning integration is a big step in bringing it to Asia and beyond. As more exchanges join the Lightning Network, more people will be able to transact instantly, across the world, with low fees. Network effects in action.”
VBTC allows its users to deposit/withdraw money from any domestic bank account in Vietnam while also offering deposit/withdrawal services in various major cities across the country in order to serve the unbanked clientele which has to rely on cash for survival.
