607 sats \ 4 replies \ @Reckless_Satoshi 16 Mar 2022 freebie \ on: Pay fiat bills with sats, decentralized, P2P, no KYC | Idea for developers bitcoin
Really cool @DarthCoin!
Reckless_Satoshi here, maintainer of RoboSats. I would say the platform is already well equipped to fulfill this task, can't think of anything really missing. E.g. simply use the free text input "Pay my T-mobile bill" as "payment method". The bill and payment details will always have to be exchanged on a encrypted 1-to-1 chat (... I do not think there should be an specific form for these. That would mean it's saved in a database somewhere).
People know very well how to use Robosats to buy 'actual things' (amazon cards, etc), also the craziest sort of exchanges. In fact, we have seen things that are next level compared to simply paying the bills ;)
In my opinion, the limitation for this sort of exchange is not technical. Rather it comes down to whether there is market makers willing to pay your bills. If there are, then it will be about whether users are willing to accept some ridiculous premiums. I believe most would opt for swallowing their pride, have a cheap fiat bank account and stack more sats. My guess is that the gap between makers and takers for this sort of exchange is too big at the moment for a market to be functional. It is also very fragmented geographically, which limits the market size and liquidity (country-scale at best, even more regional depending on the sort of bill). But I am hopeful AF! Let's take this idea seriously!
Cheers,
Reckless_Satoshi
O shit robosats 100% already could work for this 😮
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Thanks a lot!
Sadly this isn't possible if banks refuse to open an account for you, because you can't pass KYC due to no government ID. Personally I would pay up to 25% fees for personal shopping/bill payment services.
Very true, not everyone has the privilege of having access to banking at all. The client base for this sort of venture seems to be sparse in any case.
Amazon gift cards can't be used for daily expenses like food and rent.
There is some ways to convert them back into cash (well someone told me! though it has a cost of course...)
BTW would you be able to add an option for longer expiry times (mainly for cash in person and cash by mail)?
Looking into this already for some time. TL;DR: bad things can happen.
The boring full explanation:
HTLCs with long expiry times are hard to route, lock a lot of liquidity (in many nodes) for long period (high cost) and can also lead to channel force closure. In addition there must be ample safety margin. Some days the bitcoin network can find 150% as many blocks as expected, and that can lead to an escrow that gets unlocked during the fiat payment step (a total disaster!).
5-6 days is the max currently (and with some safety margin that barely allows for ~24h "public order" + 3h to "provide invoice/escrow" +24h to "exchange fiat").
Advanced maker options are coming soon, so it might be possible to extend fiat exchange step up to ~2 days at will, trading off for a shorter public order duration ~2-4 hours. Probably good enough for cash in hand... But I am starting to believe the LN model might never be good enough for cash by mail. Needs more research.
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