Vida Global pays employees in Bitcoin via Lightning in seconds

NYSE American-listed Vida Global Inc. started paying employees in Bitcoin via the Lightning Network, keeping its balance sheet in dollars.

"Vida has a global team, including team members in Argentina who prefer to be paid in Bitcoin because of challenges with their local currency," Lyle Pratt, chief executive officer of Vida Global, said in a statement.

The Austin, Texas-based company partnered with Bitcoin infrastructure firm Voltage to facilitate the transactions. Vida sends the cash equivalent to Voltage, which converts and delivers Bitcoin to employees through the Lightning Network, a second-layer protocol designed for faster and cheaper transactions. The company settles with Voltage in dollars at month-end, treating it as a standard vendor invoice.

The setup allows a publicly traded company to offer Bitcoin compensation without adding crypto complexity to its accounting or holding digital assets on its books — a model that could appeal to other firms with globally distributed teams facing currency instability.

Voltage Chief Executive Officer Graham Krizek said the arrangement solves a mismatch between "global by default" AI companies and payment rails that have not kept up. "Their team members get paid in seconds in the money they actually want, and their finance team never touches crypto," he said. "When a public company runs part of its team compensation on Bitcoin rails and the books stay boring, that's the point."

The Lightning Network was originally developed to enable Bitcoin for daily purchases by skirting transactions around the main blockchain, cutting costs and increasing speed. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has integrated the network into his payments platform Cash App and his point-of-sale terminals at Square.

Vida's move comes as more companies explore Bitcoin-based compensation for remote workers in countries with depreciating local currencies. The approach lets employers offer crypto-denominated pay without the accounting burden of holding volatile digital assets on their balance sheets.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.