Institutional Trading Desk Completes $1 Million Bitcoin Lightning Network Payment to Kraken

Institutional trading and lending firm Secure Digital Markets (SDM) has processed a $1 million payment to cryptocurrency exchange Kraken via Bitcoin's Lightning Network, marking what the company describes as the largest publicly recorded transaction on the layer-two protocol to date.

The transfer settled in 0.43 seconds on January 28 and was facilitated through Voltage's managed Lightning infrastructure, which offers node management and liquidity provisioning designed for institutional clients. The transaction represents a significant leap from the previous documented record of approximately 1.24 BTC, valued at roughly $140,000 at the time.

Voltage CEO Graham Krizek characterized the milestone as demonstrating Lightning's capability to satisfy enterprise-level requirements for large-value transfers between regulated entities.

Despite this achievement, Lightning Network adoption remains modest in scale. Public channel capacity declined from over 5,400 BTC in late 2023 to around 4,200 BTC by mid-2025, though it has since recovered to exceed 5,600 BTC. Most network activity continues to involve smaller payments, with exchanges like Bitfinex only recently raising deposit limits from 0.04 BTC to 0.5 BTC per transaction.

Fidelity Digital Assets, in a 2025 analysis using Voltage data, noted that average Lightning capacity has grown 384% since 2020, positioning the network as a potentially transformative tool for financial institutions seeking faster, lower-cost Bitcoin settlement options.