Some online merchants I pay in Bitcoin still only accept on-chain payments, and opening channels on Lightning can sometimes be very expensive. How do you deal with this when the mempool gets very hot? Do you use Liquid? or a custodial Lightning wallet like WoS?
Don't use P2PKH or P2SH addresses.
reply
If a merchant only accepts onchain, there is not much to do when the mempool is clogged but to suffer.
Outside of answering your specific question:
  • Find a merchant that uses lightning, convince your current merchant to use lighting, etc. Find a way towards Lightning. It probably helps if you make it explicit to that merchant that you are moving your business elsewhere because he doesn't accept lightning.
  • Be wise and get your UTXOs nicely arranged when fees are low.
  • Be wise and get your Lightning ready when fees are low.
As you see, it's mostly about moving to lightning and getting ready when the mempool is friendly.
reply
If the merchant only accepts on-chain payments, there isn't much you can do besides bite the bullet and pay the high fees. You could do a PayJoin but i don't think it would make much difference.
reply
Best to be prepared for high fees by having a few LN channels & a small amount of liquid (to refill LN channels). If you don't want to run a LN node some mobile LN wallets like electrum, Phoenix or blixt have worked well for me.
I'd personally wait for the fees to come down a bit to open LN channels. Fee's usually come in waves so I think they'll eventually come down a bit in the next few weeks or months.
reply