TLS50: Alex Leishman on Building River, Taro Use Cases, and Earning Yield on the Lightning Network

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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Timestamps

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