LQWD Builds the Bitcoin Payment Rails for an Economy Where AI Pays AI

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• LQWD runs Bitcoin Lightning nodes in 18 countries and has routed more than 2.8 million payments, earning fees in satoshis on every transaction it forwards, with activity tracked on its live node stats page.
• The company holds roughly 267 Bitcoin, debt-free and unencumbered, and puts a portion of it to work on the Lightning Network, where the Bitcoin earns fees in real time instead of sitting idle.
• Its new AI Launchpad lets autonomous software agents join the Lightning Network in minutes, placing LQWD at the crossroads of Bitcoin payments and the emerging machine-to-machine economy.

Disseminated on Behalf of: LQWD Technologies Corp.

A new kind of customer is about to start spending money online.

Autonomous AI agents are beginning to book, buy, and pay on their owners’ behalf. They will do it constantly, in tiny amounts, at machine speed. McKinsey estimates that agentic commerce, where AI agents shop and transact on people’s behalf, could reach $3 trillion to $5 trillion globally by 2030.

The trouble is that the world’s traditional payment systems were built for people, not for machines moving fractions of a cent thousands of times a second.

That gap is exactly what LQWD Technologies Corp. (TSXV: LQWD | OTCQX: LQWDF | FSE: 47F) is built to fill.

The Vancouver-based company builds the infrastructure that powers Bitcoin payments across the Lightning Network, Bitcoin’s high-speed settlement layer. With nodes spanning 18 countries and a debt-free Bitcoin treasury actively deployed across the network, LQWD is also beginning to onboard AI agents directly onto its platform.

For most of its history, Bitcoin has been treated as something to hold. LQWD is proving it can also be put to work.

“We’re a modern-day routing company, a payments company,” said CEO and Founder Shone Anstey. “We take Bitcoin and we actually put it to work.”

Plumbing for the machine economy

When Market One last spoke with LQWD in May, the story centred on its move into agentic payments and a debt-free Bitcoin treasury put to work on the Lightning Network. The conversation picks up there, with the company now pushing that infrastructure toward a network increasingly run by AI.

LQWD is what the industry calls a Lightning Service Provider, or LSP. Think of it as an internet service provider, but for Bitcoin payments.

It runs nodes and opens payment “channels” with other operators around the world. Then it forwards payments across that web for a fee. The more channels it funds, the more traffic it can carry.

“We’re one of the key infrastructure providers behind the scenes, with systems in 18 countries,” Anstey said. “This is very similar to how internet providers and backbone carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and Rogers all interconnect and transit data.”

One detail tends to surprise investors. LQWD has no customers in the usual sense. It does not sign up users, run identity checks, or process know-your-customer paperwork.

Instead, it connects to wallets and exchanges and earns more as the whole network grows. “We grow with the growth of the network,” Anstey said.

“We grow with the growth of the network.” — Shone Anstey, CEO and Founder, LQWD Technologies Corp.

Why the rails have to change

Credit cards and bank transfers were built for human-paced commerce. Machine commerce is a different problem.

When agents pay each other automatically, the volume runs far past what card networks were designed to handle. That is the gap LQWD is betting on.

“The level of transaction volume you’re going to require is going to be in the billions per second, not the millions,” Anstey said. “You need something that can move at the speed of intelligence.”

The rail it sits on is already filling up. Square has enabled roughly 4 million merchants to accept Bitcoin, Cash App has expanded Lightning payments, and about 15% of Bitcoin withdrawals on Coinbase now move over Lightning. Tether, the largest stablecoin issuer, has also moved to run on the network.

Bitcoin that works

Most Bitcoin treasury companies buy the asset and let it sit. Many borrow heavily to do it. 

LQWD, on the other hand, holds roughly 267 Bitcoin, completely debt-free and unencumbered, meaning no lender has a claim on it. A portion of that treasury is deployed on the Lightning Network to generate yield, allowing LQWD to utilize its Bitcoin treasury as both a strategic reserve asset and a yield-generating asset.

“Unlike other treasury companies, our Bitcoin is completely unencumbered. We have no debt,” Anstey said. “When we talk about Bitcoin per share, it’s actual Bitcoin per share, and that Bitcoin is being put to work.”

The key point is that LQWD’s Bitcoin is not sitting idle. It is deployed within Lightning channels, earning fees in Bitcoin each time a payment is routed across the network. As of the company’s May 2026 update, this equated to approximately 826 satoshis backing each basic share, or 626 satoshis on a fully diluted basis. A satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin.

A fee on every hop

The business model is simpler than it sounds. A Lightning payment travels in “hops” from one node to the next until it reaches its destination, the same way internet data does.

LQWD charges a small fee, paid in satoshis, on every hop it forwards. It is an open marketplace, and operators compete on price and speed.

“We charge a fee for every hop that a transaction goes across,” Anstey said. “Every transaction, we earn in Bitcoin in real time.”

The volume is building. LQWD has routed more than 2.8 million payments and over 3,000 Bitcoin in value, roughly a quarter of a billion dollars, with network activity growing in the triple digits year over year. Fees were tiny in the early days and are climbing as adoption rises. For now, it is a volume game. The latest figures stream on the company’s live node stats page.

Onboarding the agents

The newest piece of the story is aimed squarely at AI.

In April, LQWD launched AI Launchpad, a service that lets an AI agent get onto the Lightning Network in minutes at no cost to its operator. It pairs with SaturnZap, a free, open-source wallet the company gives away. There is even a companion site, lqwd.ai, written in machine code so that software, not people, can read it.

“It’s designed specifically for agents,” Anstey said. “A way to make it very easy for agents to get onto the Lightning Network without having to have a human in the loop.”

The longer-term ambition is bigger. LQWD wants its own network to run autonomously, with AI opening and closing channels and minimal human oversight. Stablecoin payments are the next planned step, a piece of strategic optionality the company has already flagged.

What investors are watching

The next six to 12 months come down to a handful of signals.

“The key metrics to watch are transaction growth, network expansion, and strategic partnerships,” said President Ashley Garnot. “At the same time, we continue to build out our AI capabilities, positioning LQWD at a pivotal intersection of Bitcoin, Lightning, and AI.”

The underlying thesis is a bet on two things at once: Bitcoin’s price and the growth of the Lightning Network. At current levels, the market appears to be assigning little value to LQWD’s Lightning Network operations, transaction growth, and future AI initiatives, with the stock trading close to the value of its Bitcoin holdings alone.

The structure supports that thesis. LQWD carries no debt, has approximately 32 million shares outstanding, trades close to the value of its Bitcoin holdings, and recently launched a share buyback program, appointing Ventum Financial to repurchase up to approximately 2.6 million shares. The company also plans to continue adding Bitcoin to its treasury over time.

About LQWD Technologies Corp.

LQWD Technologies Corp. (LQWD.VN) (LQWDF) (FSE: 47F) delivers investor exposure to Bitcoin’s long-term appreciation and the rise of a machine-driven economy powered by Lightning, redefining Bitcoin as a global, monetizable network and accelerating its evolution into a scalable, real-time payment layer for the internet. Backed by a strategic Bitcoin treasury deployed as productive network capital and AI-driven infrastructure optimizing routing, liquidity, and performance, LQWD is positioned at the forefront of autonomous, internet-scale transactions.

Learn more at lqwdtech.com.

Follow LQWD on X and LinkedIn.

LQWD’s live Bitcoin treasury at treasury.lqwdtech.com.

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