The Internet of Money 🌐

I took some time to really understand what Antonopoulos meant with the title of his book, "The Internet of Money." 📙

Before reading it, I honestly thought the title was misleading. To me, Bitcoin was just a currency you could exchange over the internet. It was only after reading the book that I understood: Bitcoin isn’t just money, it’s a network where money flows, just like data flows on the internet.

In recent months, there’s been a lot of talk about stablecoins. Honestly, I think they’re the only useful thing shitcoiners have managed to build (lol), but with the recent announcements around RGB and Taproot Assets, it looks like USDT is making its way back to Bitcoin. It opens up the potential for instant settlement of any tokenized currency over the Lightning Network. But that’s just one way to look at Bitcoin and Lightning becoming the Internet of Money.

With Taproot Asset Channels, we could imagine financial institutions, like banks, sending funds over Lightning on behalf of their users. That would allow for instant settlement and, more importantly, real interoperability between fiat in a bank account and sats in a Lightning wallet.

That’s more or less what Bringin has just built, and I find it very interesting. Sure, it’s not aligned with cypherpunk ideals, but it brings users, companies, and even banks one step closer to a trustless world, without the need for a central bank. Instead of relying on SWIFT, they'd use Bitcoin and Lightning.

The Euro account there is actually a vIBAN, a virtual IBAN in the name of the user. And they’ve recently added support for Lightning Addresses. 💶 Now, Bringin users can receive Euros from someone on Lightning, or send sats to a Lightning Address directly from their Euros held on their vIBAN.

I genuinely think this is a powerful feature. Sure, in a fully hyperbitcoinized world, it wouldn’t make much sense. But we’re not there yet, and maybe we never will be ⏳

In the meantime, it gives European users a real advantage: the ability to send and receive funds that are usable across the Eurozone 🇪🇺, while staying flexible, able to withdraw to their main bank account or to Bitcoin/LN withdrawals (since Bringin doesn’t hold custody).

I’m part of Bringin, so yeah, I’m probably biased. And while I’d love for everyone to adopt Bitcoin 100% and never user euros ever again, I also understand that people need time. And they need the right tools to make the leap.