i think yodl's brilliant point is that by saving the merchant their credit card transaction fee, you're essentially tipping them. or every credit card customer is anti-tipping, same thing
I'm still a bit lost on details, but there's a bit more to it. Will reread later, but fyi. Also they're actively running some incentives for now and a year or two to come, so not sure where that fits in. Good stuff regardless
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when the incentives end and the processors want to charge fees again, then we begin another long cycle of education and adoption for customers and merchants to use base layer lightning to cut the processor out of the loop. this week proves (assuming this bears out successfully) that the pattern is possible.
Then it should come down to the fundamental properties I'd imagine (won't bore you with list). And I assume the equilibrium middleman fees will fall well below where it is now with CCs
This means anyone with dollars in their Cash App account will be able to scan a bitcoin/lightning invoice and pay it without needing to first purchase the bitcoin. This is MASSIVE.
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every person who uses cash app and every merchant who wants to save on fees and enjoy instant settlement.
credit card companies dealt a death blow this week. expect the wartime atrocities to intensify
ok but for the customer, what is the actual use case. the customer doesnt pay fees when using a credit/debit card. the target audience of this feature is people who understand bitcoin but dont want to pay with it, paying a merchant who primarily wants to accept bitcoin. what's the addressable market? a few thousand people, maybe?
- merchants may offer incentives to customers to use this payment method as it saves them credit card processing fees
- some customers might enjoy the ideological appeal of sticking it to the credit card companies (I dunno, run a No Kings day promo)
- yes, people who understand bitcoin but don't want to pay with it
- other ideas that you and I haven't come up with yet because that's how progress works - in layers, as new raw materials for creativity are added, and its always a good thing to have more options for future entrepreneurs (have some humility; do you think you and I have literally all the ideas forever?)
I don't know what the addressable market is, but I do know that each of those bullets increases it, anything more than "zero" is a net positive for ME, and Square/CashApp must have an estimate that is a **lot** more than "zero" in order to have a net positive for THEM.
simply, i see no way to be anything but optimistic about this development.
Unless something like "super easy UX for non-totally-pure-bitcoin use cases will actually harm pure bitcoin adoption". I am somewhat sympathetic to that angle, but I don't see you going that direction here so I'm leaving it out.
Also, many customers _do_ pay fees, because many merchants build in the credit card fee into their prices.
Just because they aren't aware of the fee doesn't mean they wouldn't enjoy the lower price if they choose a better payment rail.
Now you can send dollars from Cashapp and receive dollars in Strike, and vice versa, instantly without ever involving slow and costly bank transfers.
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