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Easy exchange to fiat helps increase merchant adoption
688 sats \ 13 comments \ @KenyaCoin 11 Mar bitcoin
The challenge with bitcoin circular economies is the same challenge with two-sided marketplaces: Who goes first?
Uber drivers with no riders? 👎 Uber riders with no drivers? 👎
Q: So how do you jumpstart the flywheel? A: You lop off one side of the equation to eliminate the friction.
This merchant in Kibera, Kenya no longer fears bitcoin, because she's no longer stuck holding the bag and having to figure out how to spend the bitcoin she receives. With Tando [LN-enabled fiat gateway] the flywheel of spending doesn't get stuck because we removed all the friction points. Smooth!
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And it's when this merchant finds that her suppliers accept bitcoin too, she no longer will need to (nor want to) convert first to fiat.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 10h
An initiative and a spectacular first step. If you find more people who understand and comprehend this freedom, it will be even easier to gain new followers and people willing to use BTC instead of fiat, making this circular economy even purer.
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @aoeu 22h
This is awesome! We need something like this in the States too!! Maybe adoption will pick up if taxes aren’t a concern on it any longer.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 21h
No. Is dumb and doesn't help at all.
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26 sats \ 0 replies \ @aoeu 19h
The ability or need to convert to fiat? Is that what is dumb? I don’t disagree with you there. I’d personally rather interact peer to peer with bitcoin. But if the vendor wants to convert to whatever currency they want, what’s to stop them? Maybe they have a fiat bill to pay? If they choose to immediately sell it for fiat, I think that would be an unwise move that they’ll eventually understand. Everyone gets Bitcoin at the price they deserve.
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26 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 17h
I agree and have said it before in the context of Costa Rica's Bitcoin Beach wallet's ability to pay SINPE Móvil invoices via Lightning.
When a merchant can spend sats easily (with merchants that only accept fiat), they're more likely to accept sats.
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21 sats \ 7 replies \ @DarthCoin 21h
Btc-to-fiat are a trap and should be avoided. If you earn in sats, then spend in ssts and/or hold them for bad days.
You will never create a bitcoin circular economy if you go back to fiat. Is not circular anymore, you break the circle by goung back to fiat.
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21 sats \ 3 replies \ @SpaceHodler 17h
The ability to spend sats easily, even if the merchant you're paying gets fiat through an automatic conversion, makes sats more desirable and incentivizes merchants to accept them.
Fiat sucks, but most of the economy is fiat-based.
We can integrate with the existing economy and unleash the world's economic energy onto Bitcoin, or we can build a separate, isolated economy for nerds and "paranoid crypto anarchists" where all you can buy is anonymous eSIMs and VPN subscriptions.
Gift cards such as those offered by TBC and Bitrefill are fiat too, because the issuer sells them for fiat. The same with Travala, the airline still gets fiat.
The merchant, even if they accept BTC directly, can always sell it for fiat and will if they want to. It's none of my business what they do with it. But if I can pay them in BTC, that's adoption, whatever they end up doing with it.
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 17h
Why people after 15 years still do not get why was created Bitcoin in the first place?
THE WHOLE POINT OF USING BITCOIN IS TO GET RID OF ALL FIAT RAMPS, NOT TO STILL USE THEM.
If you use bitcoin only to buy on bitrefill, esims and vpns, then is a failed experiment.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @aoeu 6h
Shouldn’t we let the merchant decide what they what they do with the bitcoin we sell them? Unless you police them and prevent them from selling bitcoin back to fiat…
Getting merchants to accept bitcoin directly should be first goal…using gift cards or things like does not encourage adoption, I agree.
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26 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 16h
THE WHOLE POINT OF USING BITCOIN IS TO GET RID OF ALL FIAT RAMPS, NOT TO STILL USE THEM.
And the easier it is to spend, the closer we are to that goal.
We've come a long way over those 15 years, but we still have a long way to go.
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @aoeu 19h
In an ideal world (and the coming future), a circular economy would be preferred but it isn’t necessary to have a 100% circular economy or nothing, if those are the two choices.
IMO being able to pay someone in bitcoin for a good or service is a good start, even if they want the ability to convert back to fiat. Money works as a nonconsumable thing that has no other use than the ability to facilitate trade between two parties. While not ideal, if a vendor accepts bitcoin, then bitcoin is serving its purpose as a means to facilitate the exchange of value regardless of what they choose to do with the bitcoin they receive.
Since I am willing to give up some of my sats for the good or service they provide, I value that product more than my sats at that time. If they choose to keep the sats, great, but if they choose to sell them, then they just value fiat more than those sats. They’ll HFSP and those sats will get distributed back to the bitcoiners that understand it.
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121 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 19h
Read and learn: #576140
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26 sats \ 0 replies \ @aoeu 18h
That’s a great article.
When you finally convinced the vendor to accept bitcoin, do you monitor them to make sure they do not sell any of it back to fiat? Probably not because it is their choice to do whatever they want with those sats.
Maybe they’ll go to another store and spend some sats buying food at another place that you onboarded into bitcoin. Eventually they won’t need to convert back into fiat at all because a circular economy will exist by that point.
Having a vendor accept bitcoin directly (regardless of what they do with it afterwards) is much better than me using my bitcoin to purchase a Visa debit card or gift card….that is the fiat mindset that we need to do away with mentioned in your article.
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