Elon Musk says lightning network ‘needed’ to scale Bitcoin for now

Elon Musk has jumped into the bitcoin (BTC, +1.27%) scaling debate on Twitter, saying that the layer-2 payments network Lightning is “needed” for now.

• "Layer count depends on projected bandwidth & compute, both rising rapidly, which means single layer network [e.g. Bitcoin alone] can carry all human transactions in future imo," the Tesla CEO tweeted Friday.

• Until then, however, Lightning will be necessary to provide the required bandwidth, he argued.

• The Lightning network is a layer atop the Bitcoin blockchain designed to enable faster and cheaper transactions by enabling user-generated channels for sending and receiving payments.

• Musk has also been responding to a Twitter discussion about bitcoin's energy usage, the reason cited for Tesla's recent U-turn on accepting the cryptocurrency as a method of payment.

• He proposed that the top-10 mining organisations post audits of the amount of renewable energy used in their operations as one way to tackle the issue.