Technology stocks placed themselves among the top climbers among the subgroups, on a day when tech fortunes ebbed and flowed, giving the sector an improvement of 0.5% on the TSX (Source: Baystreet.ca, https://www.baystreet.ca/quotedata/sector_indices.aspx)
One small-cap member of the brethren in particular is finding its feet, aided by gradually wider fascination with cryptocurrencies.
Vancouver-based NetCents Technology Inc. (CSX:NC) calls itself a disruptive cryptocurrency payments technology solutions provider, and announced Thursday that it is integrating the Lightning Network into its cryptocurrency merchant gateway.
The Lightning Network is a "Layer 2" payment protocol that operates on top of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, enabling near instant transactions with extremely low or non-existent blockchain fees for users regardless of network congestion.
Lightning Network will enable NC to complete payments off the blockchain and allow the Company to process over one million transactions per second.
NetCents believes it is well-positioned in the marketplace as it is already operating a functional and robust payments platform - which is already widely distributed, and growing its transactions 40% monthly.
It remains to be seen whether Bitcoin gains credibility in a risky sector, and companies such as NetCents progress along with it.
The shares climbed 13.5 cents, or 31.8%, to 56 cents, on 600,800 shares.