Liquid Network

A Bitcoin sidechain built for fast, low-fee transactions and asset issuance.

The Liquid Network is a Bitcoin sidechain — a separate blockchain that pegs to Bitcoin. You can move sats from the main Bitcoin chain to Liquid (a "peg-in"), transact on Liquid with two-minute block times and lower fees, and move them back ("peg-out") when you want.

Liquid offers privacy features that the main chain doesn't — confidential transactions hide amounts, and confidential assets allow other tokens (stablecoins, securities) to be issued on the same network with the same privacy properties.

Wallets can use Liquid alongside on-chain and Lightning to route each payment to whichever network suits it best. BTCBitByBit's wallet now fills this role with Spark — see the Spark entry.

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Course topic

Wallets & self-custody

How to store Bitcoin so that nobody — not even us — can take it.

Related terms

Glossary

Lightning Network

A second-layer Bitcoin payment network that enables instant, low-fee transactions.

Glossary

Sats

Short for satoshis — the smallest unit of Bitcoin. 100 million sats = 1 BTC.

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