- Voltage has partnered with Google Cloud to expand its hosting capacity and locations globally.
- The partnership allows Voltage users to create Bitcoin Lightning nodes anywhere in the world, starting with operations in Iowa, Netherlands, and Singapore.
- The collaboration signifies Google’s increasing involvement with crypto companies, following previous partnerships with Coinbase and Solana, among others.
Voltage, a Bitcoin Lightning infrastructure provider, has joined forces with Google Cloud to expand its hosting capacity and geographic reach.
According to a statement issued on May 19, the collaboration would allow Voltage users to create Bitcoin Lightning nodes anywhere in the world. The initial operations, however, would be in Iowa, the Netherlands, and Singapore.
Voltage claims that its protocol facilitates money transfers over the lightning network, providing a less expensive alternative to existing options. The infrastructure provider also stated that businesses can use the Lightning network to reach a global audience.
Voltage also supports microtransactions, which can help businesses improve customer retention, lower acquisition costs, and increase customer lifetime value.
Voltage can better meet these needs by deploying on Google Cloud, which has world-class infrastructure and a global network. As a result, the move would increase Bitcoin Lightning’s global adoption.
“By using Voltage and Google Cloud, customers can deploy their workloads globally via two leading providers.”
Voltage’s founder and CEO, Graham Krizek, tweeted that the partnership indicated that Lightning was going mainstream. This sentiment is shared by many other members of the crypto community, who reacted positively to the news of the partnership.
The announcement described the benefits of the partnership to include: the ability to serve a global audience across multiple regions, initial operations in Iowa, the Netherlands, and Singapore, as well as deployments on a leading cloud platform with superior availability and networking. Furthermore, the announcement described how running Bitcoin infrastructure alongside existing workloads becomes seamless with the help of Google Cloud’s resources.
Google Cloud’s support for Bitcoin demonstrates the company’s commitment to advancing this technology and bringing it to a wider audience. Voltage’s expertise in cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes also provides the scalability needed to meet enterprise adoption requirements.
Voltage, which launched in 2020, describes itself as a Lightning as a Service (LaaS) provider that provides infrastructure solutions for cross-border settlements via the Lightning Network to payments and finance companies.
Google is Making More Crypto Moves
Meanwhile, this is yet another collaboration between Google and cryptocurrency companies. The Cloud division of the tech giant has been particularly active in onboarding crypto firms and providing blockchain-focused services.
Google announced in late 2022 that it had partnered with Coinbase to accept cryptocurrency payments for its cloud services. It also stated that it would investigate the use of Coinbase Prime for cryptocurrency storage.
Google Cloud became a Solana validator around the same time. The company stated that it would run a Solana validator that generates blocks in order to participate in and validate the Solana network.
In April, the company announced a collaboration with Polygon Labs to offer customers automated access to Polygon blockchain nodes via its fully managed node hosting service.
