Alex Leishman is the founder and CEO of River, a platform for buying Bitcoin that also happens to be one of the largest players on the Lightning Network.
In our conversation, Alex explained why River launched their Lightning integration way back in 2019, we explored some of the new use cases Taro could unlock on Lightning, and examined the risk-reward tradeoffs of earning yield on Lightning vs. other forms of yield.
→ River: https://river.com/
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00:00 - Intro
02:51 - Alex Leishman Intro
04:48 - Why Alex Built River
11:23 - Why River Integrated the Lightning Network
17:19 - Important Lightning Trends for River
25:59 - Will River Facilitate Asset Exchanges on Taro?
35:27 - Lessons Learned from Operating Lightning Routing Nodes
45:01 - Earning Yield on the Lightning Network
53:26 - Will Bitcoin Flow to Lightning As Yields Rise?
57:00 - Risks of Operating a Hot Lightning Wallet
59:14 - Exponential Lightning Network Growth
1:01:48 - The Lightning Round