Supporting him is Tim Draper, one of the most prominent figures in the community, during a Q&A session during a blockchain event held in Malta last week; in fact, the well-known venture capitalist has argued that the growth of the Lightning network will contribute in an important way to driving the increase in bitcoin prices, which, according to Draper, could touch the now sci-fi figure of 250 thousand dollars by 2023. More in the Draper specifically stated that:

"I think Bitcoin payment processors will really open the door to exponential growth in prices; thanks to developments such as Lightning Network and OpenNode, which allow us to spend Bitcoins very freely and quickly, BTC will simply cease to be a way to conserve purchasing power and value, and it can finally be used for retail and micropayments too "

As known, Lightning Network is attempting to scale off chains to exponentially increase the number of transactions that can be processed by the network; clearly this is a compromise and, in a sense, it is a development that goes in the opposite direction to the reason why bitcoin was born, ie to eliminate intermediation. With Lightning Network intermediaries play a central role, however this does not imply that users lose control of their private keys, even if for some payments they will inevitably have to rely on intermediaries. Meanwhile, although the graphs show that the bears are raising their heads, the sentiment of the community is still overbearingly bullish, dragged to the stars by the imminent halving, which, however, as many observers have been highlighting for some months, could have an effect on prices very much lower than in the past. Waiting for time to show us how things are, then, all we have to do is keep our fingers crossed and hope that Tim Draper's prediction turns out to be correct.