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361 sats \ 9 replies \ @justin_shocknet 31 Mar \ on: Who could Bitcoin builders be serving better? bitcoin
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.
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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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!
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