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A proposal to streamline "spend-replace" to drive adoption
2585 sats \ 11 comments \ @marco 14 Oct bitcoin
I put myself in the camp of those not really willing to use Bitcoin to purchase goods and services, and I agree that this is a problem.
"We have more bitcoin merchants than Bitcoiners willing to spend. We don’t need more merchant adoption, but spenders adoption." -- Saunter
I believe that, in order to address this issue, the "spend-replace" practice needs to be a no-brainer.
I used this approach a couple of times for fairly large purchaes I made. However, it meant that each time I had to complete the BTC payment with my wallet, then move the fiat equivalent of the bitcoin I spent to an exchange, then use that money to purchase BTC at a rate different from the one applied for the initial BTC payment to the merchant, then move the new BTC out of the exchange and back to my wallet.
Of course, this is very annoying and not sensible for small purchases. In those cases, it makes more sense to replace multiple BTC spendings with a single BTC purchase. However, doing this manually and on a regular basis, is going to be complex and time-consuming.
A more convenient solution would be to have your wallet automatically manage the "spend-replace" process in collaboration with services like Relai, Bittr, Bitcoin Well, etc.
After I have done enough purchases using Bitcoin, I could simply receive an alert saying: "Threshold reached! It's time to replace your Bitcoins! Transfer xxx EUR/USD to Relai/Bittr/Well/... bank account to purchase yyy BTC that will be received right in this wallet."
I would immediately switch to a wallet offering this feature! What do you think? Would you use such a strategy?
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300 sats \ 2 replies \ @anon 14 Oct
This is all just nonsense mind-tricks spouted by non-believers that still hold fiat
If you are on a zero-fiat standard (ie, a bitcoiner) then the situation flips. If the merchant doesn't take bitcoin, then you have to go buy some cash to make the purchase.
You probably keep a certain amount of local currency handy (eg, a walletful) for spending at these fiat-maxi merchant outposts.
But of course, you prefer to support your bitcoin-only and bitcoin-accepting merchants.
If you get paid in fiat, you take it all out in cash, and you use the cash to purchase bitcoin.
Zero-fiat is the way to go.
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75 sats \ 1 reply \ @nerd2ninja 14 Oct
"When Bitcoin is your bank account, when every dollar you earn is going into Bitcoin, you are disproportionately exposed to the net positive volatility of Bitcoin. You tend to spend more when it goes up, save more when it goes down. Do I regret spending 0.1 BTC on a cell phone? No. Everyone else should regret not putting their entire bank account in Bitcoin. It's not those of us living on Bitcoin losing out, it's those of you treating it like an investment." -Some guy I know on discord.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @028559d218 14 Oct
My thoughts - Save 98% of what you can save in Bitcoin... Spend the other 2% in Bitcoin or at least try to. The vast majority is still saved that way but Bitcoin is still transactional too.
In the long run... I believe even sats will be 'expensive' so any amount of sats 'zapped' could be an outrageous amount LOL. So it doesn't really matter anyway.
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300 sats \ 0 replies \ @standardcrypto 14 Oct
As long as we are dreaming, let's look at the inverse thing.
Recieve-replace.
You lightning invoice fiat in your EDC wallet (see my other post, is there a better term for this btw), receive, autotransfer to exchange, and autochange to fiat in the amount expected, ideally guaranteed by exchange if completed in short amount of time.
There are products like bitpay that already do this, but it locks you into bitpay.
You want a generic thing that lets you hook up any EDC wallet to any exchange that supports the protocol, so there is competition.
Well, the problem with this is
1, low demand, as in the spend case 2, exchange and banks and everything else outside the bitcoin ecosystem is incentivized to maximize inconvenience and "uniqueness" to promote lockin.
Doesn't mean it's not a good idea though.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @libertas 14 Oct
Why not just spend through Strike? This is one of the scenarios for which I asked this question: #712950
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 14 Oct
This seems like a good option for Fold to offer at some point. They already offer no-fee exchange of bitcoin and fiat. I think their goal is to expand the functionality of their wallets.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @plebpoet 14 Oct
A wallet I use rounds up each of my fiat purchases and makes a btc purchase for me using that factor of rounding. Perhaps I could increase that factor, and it would accomplish something like what you're suggesting. Could be useful
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nerd2ninja 14 Oct
In the short term, it might be a better idea to think about what Bitcoiners do want to spend on. What are Bitcoiners saving up to buy? Answer that and you should be able to then come up with ways to meet market demand.
Based on the way things are going, the kinds of markets that show up around retirement towns or gated communities might be the kind of markets we're talking about.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @leonidastouch 14 Oct
I like the fact that you are thinking in terms of proposals. It may come in fruition later but I am hoping. Meanwhile the current system is no-brainer as well so promote it as well.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @standardcrypto 14 Oct
Interestingly, a concept that might help with this is "attached bitcoin wallet" which I have only seen here with stacker news for "SN's wallet plans"
#523435
basically you want the exchange to be an "attached wallet" that interfaces fluidly with your EDC wallet.
but of course the exchanges don't want this for uniqueness/lockin reasons.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @standardcrypto 14 Oct
Yeah, it's a good idea, and 99.999% chance you aren't the first one that thought of this.
lightning spend on lightweight self custody everyday phone wallet (EDC wallet, for everyday carry), buy on exchange, lightning withdraw to EDC wallet. Sounds great, why did no one do this?
1 problem, low demand. (Few people actually spending bitcoint)
Ignoring that, let's look at the technical issue. how do you interface with the exchange to do the replace part?
You need a solution / exchange api that is flexible enough to let you automagically authenticate and market buy, but not so flexible it lets a bad guy drain your exchange wallet if your day to day spending wallet is compromised (you lose your phone).
Further, you want to be able to link multiple day to day spending wallets with multiple exchanges, with the least maintenance burden to devs.
So you probably want some common interface or BOLT or BIP or protocol or something like that.
But exchanges want to make themselves as unique and inconvenient as possible to protect their competitive business moat. So there's that.
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