How do I sell bitcoin via the Lightning Network in Canada? ⚡️

Sell your bitcoin instantly via the Lightning Network, now available to all Canadian bitcoin well accounts. 

Adding the ability to sell bitcoin via the Lightning Network (LN) is a major step towards the Bitcoin Well vision of enabling independence by making it easy to use bitcoin directly from self custody.

Each Bitcoin Well customer has a unique Bitcoin Well Payment Address automatically created for them. To find your Payment Address, navigate to the Sell page in your Canadian Bitcoin Well account and then select "Lightning". Your Bitcoin Well Payment Address automatically converts all bitcoin into dollars, and sends you an e-Transfer. This means, you can send LN-BTC from your self custody and instantly receive dollars in your bank account.

Best of all, the Bitcoin Well Payment Address is simple to remember: yourwelltag@sell.btcw.app. For example, if your welltag is satoshi123, your Bitcoin Well Payment Address will be satoshi123@sell.btcw.app. 

Once you’ve sent your BTC, Bitcoin Well instantly converts the bitcoin into Canadian dollars, and we’ll send Canadian dollars to the email address used for your Bitcoin Well account. This entire process (sending BTC, receiving it, converting it to CAD, and sending CAD to you) only takes a couple seconds – lightning fast! ⚡️

What Kind of a Bitcoin Well account can use Payment Addresses?

Both Lite Accounts and fully verified accounts have access to Bitcoin Well Payment Addresses. bitcoinwell.com/signup

As a reminder, a Lite Account is a Bitcoin Well account that only has a verified email address and a password. These accounts can utilize Bitcoin Well Payment Address transactions up to $995 and are charged a spread of 2%. You can make a Lite Account by going to bitcoinwell.com/lite.

A fully verified account is a Bitcoin Well account that has a verified email address and password, as well as full identity verification. Bitcoin Well Payment Addresses have a limit of 10,000,000 sats (0.1 bitcoin) per transaction for fully verified accounts, and charge a 1% spread. You can sign up for a Bitcoin Well account at bitcoinwell.com/signup.

What is the Lightning Network?

The Lightning Network is commonly described as a Layer Two protocol on top of the Bitcoin network. Many often draw the analogy of credit cards, and rightly so. Credit cards are built on top of the legacy banking system and were invented to speed up payments. Credit cards sped up payments, however they still require the legacy banking system and a network of (costly) intermediaries.

The Lightning network incorporates the benefits of increased speed of payment from credit cards, but retains bitcoin’s peer to peer and decentralized nature. With the Lightning Network, you get the benefits of Bitcoin’s sound money and self-custody, while enjoying cheap and instant payments. 

How does the Lightning Network work? 

Like the Bitcoin network, the Lightning Network is made up of nodes running the Lightning Network software. LN transactions, however, are not publicly broadcast on Bitcoin blockchain. As a result individual Lightning nodes transact only with one another and in total privacy. Lightning payment channels, as they are called, enable super fast payments in a fraction of a second. Hence the name – Lightning! 

Why should I use the Lightning Network instead of Bitcoin’s regular blockchain?

Reason #1

The Lightning Network is famous for being fast. While a bitcoin transaction typically takes 10 minutes to confirm, LN transactions don’t require confirmations and finalize in a second or two. 

Reason #2

Lightning transactions also benefit from a different fee structure than Bitcoin’s mainchain where a user pays for the size or weight of their transaction. In essence, the bigger the transaction, the more fees needed to stamp it into the blockchain’s growing ledger. Lightning transactions pay about 0.1% of the transaction’s total value. This is because transactions aren’t all competing with one another for scarce blockspace, instead they are relayed back and forth between peers who open up payment channels. 

The fee is used to pay for using someone’s channel, like a bridge toll. Lightning’s unique fee structure enables a different kind of economic activity, one that largely focuses on smaller transactions. Sending $20 over bitcoin’s blockchain may be expensive and slow at times, but sending $20 over lightning is near-instantaneous and inexpensive.

Reason #3

Since Lightning payments are not communicated across their public blockchain but instead between a small number of peers, Lightning transactions benefit from immense privacy, similar to that of physical cash. If Bob and Alice send funds to one another via Lightning, then Jim and Karen will have no idea who is sending what and when. 

Why does the Lightning Network matter?

Lightning is a valuable addition to the bitcoin network. While the bitcoin network is ideal for large sums of money, it lacks practicality for things such as ‘buying a cup of coffee’. Thankfully, the bitcoin network can focus on its role as an emerging monetary asset, and its daily usability can be enhanced by Layer 2 networks, like the Lightning network, that are built on top of bitcoin to increase its functionality. 

About Bitcoin Well

Bitcoin Well exists to enable independence. We do this by coupling the convenience of modern banking, with the benefits of bitcoin. In other words, we want to make it easy to use bitcoin in self custody. 

We are publicly traded (and love when our customers become shareholders!) and hold ourselves to a high standard of enabling life on a bitcoin standard. If you would like to learn more about Bitcoin Well, please visit our website or reach out!