I don't think it's liquidity, both SGD and HKD are freely convertible and easy to swap. Also, why would they have different exchange rates for different SGD products? It seems they are hiding costs in the exchange rates

In my experience the exchange rates (USD, EUR, CAD) have always been fair in the past. Their Lightning node is also well-managed, so there are usually no significant routing fees.

But you're right, the card in question has an absurd exchange rate, regardless of what you pay with. I also checked for the Ikea and Grab SGD vouchers, and it seems like they use at least three different exchange rates for SGD/USD, then apply a fair rate for USD/BTC.

I also checked for HKD, and the 7-Eleven vouchers are also marked up by 8%, the Foodpanda cards were marked up 10%.

For CAD or EUR I couldn't find any cards with a markup. Glad you noticed, will look carefully in the future!

I agree, Canada shouldn't miss this historic opportunity. They might have to legalize housing and healthcare, though!

Flying sucks generally, and lounges are just a way to upsell you on a slightly less bad experience. Trains in Europe or Asia are amazing, especially when the station is downtown. You can sip aperitivos in a cute local cafe, then ten minutes later speed with 200mph towards your destination. No security, no queues, no faux status upgrades. I'll always take a 6h train ride over a 1h flight.

Kudos to you for writing and testing this! One little nit: Her name is Elle Mouton!

Yes, on September 2 I made a new pairing phrase and ran into the same error.

This is what this looks like:

Recently I have been unable to zap on Stacker News over LNC. I created a new connection phrase and made sure I have enough sats in my wallet. Could something be broken?

Keep your node, with one or two channels to other good routing nodes. It's very useful for making and sending payments over the Lightning Network

Which one is your favourite place to spend sats!

Are KYC coins really expected to be more valuable in such a situation? That's the only way I could see separate markets with separate prices emerging. How much could the difference be? Anything more than few bips would be easy to arbitrage.

When I say Lightning payment processor, I mean any kind of service or program that helps you generate an invoice on your or their Lightning node and check whether this is paid.

The most common payment processor in Vancouver is Coinos, which also acts as a custodial wallet. There is also IBEX and Eukapay. Very common elsewhere is the PoS functionalities of Wallet of Satoshi. I also like BTCPay, LNbits, Bitcoin Suisse, and there are countless others.

A good example is the LNbits TPoS. Feel free to open it on your device, generate an invoice over 1 cent and pay it from any wallet. You can then verify on your device that the invoice is paid because a green tick appears on the screen, but I hold the keys to my node.

Almost all payment processors have this feature, but the merchants don't want to get a dedicated device (e.g. tablet) to run it, and they don't want to teach their staff to use it.

The mayor is spiritually on board, but the city has very little influence on this.

I like Fastmail. Unlimited domains, aliases, but based in Australia. They used to take Bitcoin and I'm trying to bully them to re-enable it.

As I understand Bitcoin is relatively restricted in Mainland China, but it's also not illegal. How are people using Bitcoin there these days, and how do you stay up to date with news from China?

I did go to all the BTC merchants that I found around me from BTCMap! Just won't do a trip report about them this time

There seems to be some legal requirement that makes it impossible to custody sats for your clients. You can custody their euros, but not their sats, so you have to set them up with their own wallet, node or channel.

Thank you! May our paths cross!

Thank you! Hope you can make it back to Italy sometime soon!