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75 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 31 Mar \ parent \ on: Who could Bitcoin builders be serving better? bitcoin
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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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.
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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
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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.
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