Earlier today, the global crypto industry took yet another step in the right direction when former Miss Universe (Finland) 2015, Rosa-Maria Ryyti, became the latest recipient of the much-talked about ‘BTC Lightning Torch’.

Unexpected but Welcome

According to a trusted crypto media outlet, Jeremias Kangas — the founder and owner of LocalBitcoins — decided to pass the LN Torch outside of the crypto community to Ryytti so as to help spread more awareness about the alt-currency sector.

As many of our regular readers may remember, the Lightning Torch relay commenced earlier this year (in January) so as to “stress test” Bitcoin’s Lightning Network — a second-layer payment protocol that has been designed to help improve BTC’s overall scalability and global adoption ratio.

Also, even though the Lightning Network has only been a part of Bitcoin’s mainnet for less than 1.5 years, the aforementioned Torch relay has successfully demonstrated that the currency’s network is highly resilient.

In addition to all this, it is also worth pointing out that in recent times, a number of high-profile individuals have become involved with this entire exercise — thereby lending this nascent technology with a lot of mainstream credibility.

A Closer Look

From a technical standpoint, we can see that the Lightning relay works when nodes within the network accept the Torch and then add a nominal amount of Bitcoin to it — before passing it forward to the next person.

At press time, the total tx amount associated with the Torch is estimated to be worth 4.22 Million satoshis. Not only that, the Torch has also previously been passed to more than 275 different individuals.

Lastly, it is being reported that Ryyti will now be handing over the reigns of the Torch to Colombian Bitcoin guru BTC Andres.

It has been exciting to #hodl the LN torch! I posted about this on my IG account & will be donating 10K sats to the first 21 of my followers who manages to send me an invoice! Let's see how well my followers can handle the #Lightning.#Bitcoin #LNTrustchain @btcven @hodlonaut pic.twitter.com/TSLWJR5LUi

— Rosa-Maria Ryyti⚡️ (@RosaRyyti) April 7, 2019

In regards to this entire episode, Ryyti recently took to instagram to post the following message:

“I was honored to receive the torch from pioneer Jeremias Kangas and now there are only 8 places left. The funds raised will be donated to Bitcoin Venezuela.”

More on the Matter

It appears as though Ryyti’s recent advocacy of Bitcoin has gone down quite well with the global crypto community since a lot of people on social media have been talking quite positively about this latest development.

With that being said, it should also be pointed out that this is not the first time the Lightning Torch has gone beyond the realm of crypto— as earlier this year Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took control of it before handing it over to somebody else.

Other Key Data Worth Pointing Out

• In the recent past, Dorsey had pledged to integrate an LN-based payment module into Twitter as well his payments startup app called ‘Square’.
• According to crypto tracking website 1ML.com, Bitcoin’s LN mainnet currently possesses a total of 7876 nodes as well as more than 39,000 channels. Not only that, it also has a total tx capacity of about 1080 BTC.

Final Take

In closing out this piece, it should be mentioned that late last week, a representative for crypto exchange ‘Bolt’ released a statement claiming that his firm had been successful in integrating a ‘cross-chain atomic swap module’ into their platform’s native UI. As a result of this, Bolt users now have the ability to facilitate Lightning-based trades between Litecoin and Bitcoin in a seamless, hassle-free manner.