Who could Bitcoin builders be serving better? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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Who could Bitcoin builders be serving better?

3540 sats \ 22 comments \ @birdeye21 31 Mar bitcoin

SMB owners

I’ve observed a lot of focus on tools for the individual, and services for corporations/institutions, but I have yet to see dedicated Bitcoin services tailored for the mom n pop shops and other small local businesses.

Are they out there? Or is it a niche not worth dedicating more energy to?

For me, this feels like a particularly odd niche to be forgoing attention given their prevalence. 60% of businesses in the US have less than 5 employees. ~90% have fewer than 20.

I’ve pondered for some time wondering if it’s a segment that bitcoiners could be better equipping, and what I could do to help them personally. But it’s hard to decipher if this is an obvious gap in attention, or a mere extension of what’s already available for individual support.

Who else are we underserving in your opinion?

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361 sats \ 9 replies \ @justin_shocknet 31 Mar

niche not worth dedicating more energy to?

Bingo, untold resources have already been wasted trying to force Bitcoin as a payments system in the meat space, that's not where its product market fit is because there's not a real problem there to be solved.

Even the Bitcoin Bar, Pubkey, still does most of its transactions with cash or CC. There are some usability issues with multiple bartenders using a single node (which the architecture Lightning.Pub and ShockWallet solve actually) but that doesn't change the fact that customers, even hardcore bitcoiners, have 0 reason to pay in Bitcoin except to virtue signal. Even I use my Discover card when I'm in town.

Paying attention to this wrong thing has left gaps in other areas though of course, its entirely our fault that micro-services and things susceptible to chargebacks on the internet are not using Bitcoin/Lightning. There's people catching on to the fact that Bitcoin should be the native currency of AI, but even simpler than that, things like VPS/VPN/Mail Relay and things like that in a hostile internet environment are prime candidates... its just that the tooling for this still sucks horribly as we've collectively built everything but what is needed.

75 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 31 Mar

There is one potential reason which is credit card swipe fees, which are on the order of 2%-3%. Lightning routing fees are closer to 0.1%.

But right now, the fixed cost of maintaining a lightning wallet is probably more than whatever savings you could expect from lightning payments.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.

Overall, I agree with you that micropayments and cross-border are the more immediately promising use cases. But if it can become super easy to use lightning and enough people onboard, I can see it overtaking credit cards due to lower transaction costs.

63 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 31 Mar

Lightning routing fees are closer to 0.1%

That's not an "all-in" cost though, as long as businesses still have expenses in dollars accepting fiat for goods and services will remain be cheaper than Lightning PLUS exchange spreads.

As a spender I also get that percentage back and then some, and bear 0 risk. There's a massive cult around airline shitcoins too that will never give that up. I've personally paid the 3% up-charge at superette because who wants to go to an ATM all the time?

I do think there is room for it in remnant cash business, where arbitrary banking issues exist, weed stores were a good example Mallers hit on in the earliest days... gun stores faced censorship issues too... these are again areas of hostility not unlike the internet. Empirically there's been no market validation outside areas of hostility.

53 sats \ 1 reply \ @birdeye21 OP 31 Mar

Recently experienced this problem. I tried to buy a $3 item but that didn't meet the small business's $5 minimum threshold for card transactions. Didn't have any cash on me to pay for it. "If only Lightning!!", I yelled internally. Sometimes I feel emboldened to speak up about that sort of thing but it was also 5 minutes before closing time for them lol

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 31 Mar

This is another argument FOR cards in the eye of the seller, people trapped without cash would have used the excuse to a pastry or whatever. Retailer wins again.

103 sats \ 1 reply \ @unschooled 31 Mar

not a real problem there to be solved.

Could transferring their money across geographical borders for fractions of cents be a strong enough incentive for some folks?

156 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 31 Mar

geographical borders

Exactly this, this is an area where Bitcoin and Lightning should excel as the friction of cross-border is really high in the legacy system. It ties into the overall money of the internet use-case.

Not just friction either, some countries populations are geo-fenced from payments altogether, which has been part of our thesis with Lightning.Video. Enabling global content creators is an asymmetric move against big platforms with permission-based or advertiser dictated programs.

47 sats \ 2 replies \ @birdeye21 OP 31 Mar

Interesting. I agree that jumping straight to MoE is a premature focus...And yes, seeing them fumble the Trump bitcoin payment at Pubkey was not a great look xD

Great points on serving platforms dealing in hostile internet environment. Tooling in general may still suck but have you seen any examples of steps in the right direction?

77 sats \ 1 reply \ @justin_shocknet 31 Mar

Lightning.Pub has been my effort to provide a sturdy base for more commercial use and start nudging things in that direction.

L402, while I don't agree with the semantics, is also directionally correct in identifying the need to monetize API's. Lightning Labs in general seems to be getting more commercially focused with their roadmap, which is important.

I don't care for the semantics of Greenlight either, but there's signal in the Breeze-Greenlight solution being commercially focused.

Phoenix wallets Phoenixd spin out is more capitulation to commercial architecture.

I've dunked on mobile nodes and their toy use-cases for a long time, and now the capitulation to that insight across the ecosystem is becoming apparent. There's not much notice yet, but these pivots are an important step, because now the real building can begin now that folks have figured out what NOT to build.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @birdeye21 OP 31 Mar

It's like relationships man, exes can be a valuable fine tuning process..

Very cool to see you working on this stuff, going to learn more about Lightning.Pub!

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @BlokchainB 31 Mar

I think the wallets and POS systems are still too difficult for the common person to use. For example I been thinking about how I can tip my barber in sats and not cash.

Tell him to download strike? Most people roll their eyes and don’t want to deal with another app. Then let’s say you get them to download the app the next is ask how do I turn this into cash/money I can spend.

So I just gave up

63 sats \ 1 reply \ @birdeye21 OP 31 Mar

long way to go still...

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 31 Mar

Maybe another 10-20 years

83 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 31 Mar

I largely agree with what @justin_shocknet is saying in the comments, but I also see scope for easier to use payment systems for small businesses.

If something simple enough existed, I would tell some of the small businesses near me about it and promise to increase my patronage if they accepted lightning payments.

83 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 31 Mar

I get the sense that it is on people’s mind (people being lightning devs) but their daily operations/ money-making sustaining work/ interests take them other places before this one. I would want to explain to a small business owner why saving in bitcoin long term is a good plan, and this is of more importance than the ability to accept a new form of money for small purchases in their shop. So there’s a misalignment, as I see it. But you’re right, the gap is widened by the friction in the tech. Still, I think there’s lessons to learn particularly from Square and Cashapp….didnt their innovations serve the small business owner first? And treat them as primary?

55 sats \ 0 replies \ @jowo 31 Mar

tricky question, the answer to it obviously has huge potential financial windfall. I'd say probably target some niche that has a big overlap with existing bitcoiners interest e.g. not too niche, and/or simple integrating btc payments to an already existing business since bitcoina will seek out businesses that accept btc

45 sats \ 2 replies \ @Diego 31 Mar

Creators: musicians, photographers, videographers, writers. I guess you could class some of them as SMB.

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @birdeye21 OP 31 Mar

nah man they just need nfts, trust me bro

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 31 Mar

lol

38 sats \ 1 reply \ @ealvar26 31 Mar

Great post. I think BTCPay Server and Zaprite are really great tools for small businesses. Especially for e-commerce and consultants, respectively.

I think easy ways to connect Bitcoin payments to existing systems are always in short supply. That's why BTCpay really shines: connection to Woo commerce, Shopify and BigCommerce are really key.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @birdeye21 OP 31 Mar

yes..I like what @justin_shocknet had mentioned though, feels like payments are still a bit premature in terms of demand, at least in the US. Gets me thinking about the order of operations for these businesses -- what are the most efficient steps to bitcoin adoption? It all starts with adoption on the balance sheet, but where to go from there that makes the most sense?

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @joseph_at_nostr_fan 1 Apr

These are the folks who need an easy to use alternative to take credit cards, but instead take Bitcoin, and take stablecoins.

The problem is Visa and the credit cards have a huge advantage, and few will jump to Bitcoin unless there is some incentive and huge easy of use.

BTC Pay Server is not that easy to use. Is there something super easy out there that does Point-of-Sale and has a fiat exit ramp? That could be a business.