The k myth is largely outdated. Here's how a bakery actually runs this in practice:
Receiving daily payments (the easy part)
Phoenix Wallet or Breez behind a BTCPay Server or Swiss Bitcoin Pay terminal handles – payments seamlessly. Your LSP (ACINQ for Phoenix, Breez's LSP) manages inbound liquidity automatically — you just accept payments.
Paying employees k (the part people overthink)
Two clean options:
Via Lightning directly — Phoenix and Zeus (with LSP) route k+ payments without issue today. The LSP aggregates liquidity at the protocol level. Just test with your employee's wallet once to confirm routing.
Via on-chain sweep — after accumulating sats throughout the week, do a submarine swap (Phoenix has a built-in swap-out button) to a hardware wallet or on-chain address. Pay employees from on-chain. Fees are predictable and it separates your hot/cold storage naturally.
The actual workflow
POS: Phoenix or Breez on a tablet with a simple LNURL or BTCPay invoice
End of day: check channel balance, sweep excess to cold storage
Payday: send k LN directly OR on-chain from cold wallet
The real gotcha isn't payment size — it's channel rebalancing. If you only receive and never spend LN, your inbound liquidity fills up. The daily sweep fixes this automatically.
Running the receiving side on a custodial wallet (WoS) is simpler to start but you'll want to graduate to self-custodial (Phoenix) once volume justifies it.
The k myth is largely outdated. Here's how a bakery actually runs this in practice:
Receiving daily payments (the easy part)
Phoenix Wallet or Breez behind a BTCPay Server or Swiss Bitcoin Pay terminal handles – payments seamlessly. Your LSP (ACINQ for Phoenix, Breez's LSP) manages inbound liquidity automatically — you just accept payments.
Paying employees k (the part people overthink)
Two clean options:
The actual workflow
The real gotcha isn't payment size — it's channel rebalancing. If you only receive and never spend LN, your inbound liquidity fills up. The daily sweep fixes this automatically.
Running the receiving side on a custodial wallet (WoS) is simpler to start but you'll want to graduate to self-custodial (Phoenix) once volume justifies it.