Part 5 — Intro to Bitcoin and Lightning

Key insights. Bitcoin provides the foundation for Glimpse’s financial architecture, and the Lightning Network makes it practical for real-time settlement. Bitcoin is a scarce, rule-based digital asset with a fixed supply of 21 million coins, enforced by a decentralized network of nodes through proof-of-work consensus. Once confirmed, a Bitcoin transaction is final—there are no reversals, intermediaries, or chargebacks—which gives it the same assurance as physical settlement. The Lightning Network extends Bitcoin’s utility by enabling instant, low-fee transfers through off-chain payment channels, allowing traders to move capital globally in seconds while retaining Bitcoin’s underlying security. Together, Bitcoin and Lightning form a monetary system that is transparent, censorship-resistant, and independent of banks or stablecoins. For Glimpse users, this means deposits, trades, and withdrawals settle instantly in satoshis on infrastructure that is open, auditable, and built for global access.

The Bitcoin Monetary Base

Glimpse runs on Bitcoin and settles payments over the Lightning Network. To use the platform well, you should understand what Bitcoin is, why it matters, how Lightning achieves instant, low-fee transfers, and how to get started with trustworthy wallets.

Bitcoin is a digital bearer asset divided into 100,000,000 units per coin (“satoshis”). Its total supply is capped at 21,000,000 BTC by protocol rules. New coins are issued on a fixed schedule that halves the block subsidy roughly every 210,000 blocks (about four years), so issuance decays geometrically toward the hard cap. No committee can expand supply. These monetary rules are enforced by thousands of independently operated nodes that validate blocks and transactions. Because users can refuse software that violates the rules, Bitcoin’s monetary policy is both transparent and difficult to change, which is the basis of its credibility as a store of value.

Transactions confirmed on the base chain are final in the economic sense: once buried under sufficient proof-of-work, there are no reversals of the ledger. Settlement does not rely on a central counterparty; control of a private key is control of the asset. This property—final settlement without authorities—has been explored at length in the philosophy-of-money literature. Finality increases payment certainty for users and reduces operational and dispute risk for a venue like Glimpse.

The Lightning Network

Lightning is a second-layer protocol that makes Bitcoin practical for retail-grade speed and cost. Two parties open a payment channel with a single on-chain transaction and then exchange updated, signed balances off-chain. Payments can be routed across a path of channels using hashed timelock contracts; either every hop succeeds atomically or the payment fails, so intermediaries never gain custody. Because channels are reused, the marginal cost of a Lightning payment is typically only a few satoshis and latency is measured in seconds rather than block intervals. In short, the base layer provides security and finality; Lightning provides throughput and user experience.

Why Glimpse Uses Bitcoin and Lightning

This layered design fits Glimpse’s needs. Traders can deposit and withdraw quickly, redeploy capital immediately, and move small amounts of value economically—something that is impractical on-chain when miner fees spike. Using Bitcoin avoids dependence on fiat rails and third-party tokens, while Lightning preserves Bitcoin’s settlement assurances for day-to-day flows. The result is a global, 24/7 payment system with neutral governance, predictable monetary policy, and instant retail settlement.

Getting Started

You can begin with two tools: an on-chain wallet for long-term custody and a Lightning wallet for operations. On desktop, non-custodial on-chain wallets such as Electrum or Sparrow give you full key control, hardware-wallet support, and precise fee and UTXO management. For Lightning on mobile, Phoenix offers non-custodial control with automated channel management; Zeus is suitable if you run your own node and want full sovereignty. Custodial Lightning wallets such as Wallet of Satoshi or Speed prioritize simplicity for small balances but require trusting the provider. A sensible pattern is to keep an operating float on Lightning for trading and sweep profits back to on-chain cold storage at intervals.

Security and Best Practice

Operational security is straightforward and non-negotiable. Back up your seed phrase offline and verify you can restore from it with a small test before moving meaningful funds. Prefer a hardware wallet for long-term on-chain holdings. Keep Lightning balances proportionate to your short-term needs, because Lightning is an always-on hot environment by design.

At a deeper level, Bitcoin’s significance is conceptual as much as technical. It combines credible scarcity, institutional neutrality, and final settlement into a monetary base that is governed by rules rather than discretion. That base can be layered: the conservative settlement layer remains stable while higher layers like Lightning deliver speed and scale.