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Carrefour could hardly ever pay its employees with Bitcoin because it's a Fiat company. Even if they want to do that, they'd have to first go through the stress of buying Bitcoins with Fiat and then paying their employees.
The easier way we scrap all that is through Hosted/Fiat Lightning channels.
With that, Carrefour can directly accept Bitcoin payments while retaining Fiat stability, pay their workers with Sats without volatility concerns, and can easily move any profits from Bitcoin sales to on-chain if they so wish.
The easier way to transfer the Fiat-run world onto Bitcoin is to make Bitcoin the base asset on which the Fiat value is moved. Fiat channel is the closest attempt to achieving that.
And nobody needs to depend on any particular entity since anyone can run a Lightning node and be their own Host.
Great use case, but what we see here is using the Tando app to accept Sats, while Tando then pays Carrefour with Kenyan shillings.
Carrefour did not actually receive Sats, and can't spend Sats. It is a step in the right direction, but Carrefour can actually directly accept Sats without worrying about Volatility as a fiat-run business by using "Fiat Lightning channels" and running its own infrastructure.
Very easy, no reliance on any third-party swaps and conversions.
For a lightweight mobile wallet that is suitable for Bitcoin local communities and the advancement of Bitcoin as a medium of exchange, check out Valet Bitcoin.
Supports:
- Self-custodial on-chain usage
- Self-custodial Lightning usage
- Custodial Hosted Lightning channels:
Enables plug-and-play onboarding on Lightning, (No liquidity commitment) with self-custodial Lightning-grade privacy
Cryptographically enforced fraud-proof and auditability through a cross-signed state encoding.
- Custodial Fiat Lightning channels (with self-custodial Lightning grade privacy) :
Enables spending Sats without being bothered about Bitcoin's Fiat volatility. Especially useful for users who earn in Bitcoin but have a fixed monthly living cost. As soon as you receive your Bitcoin pay, you can move your fixed living costs to fiat channels as a stable-Fiat value and spend from there while you keep your main wealth in the on-chain self-custody wallet.
It is also very useful for merchants that want to receive Bitcoin payments but do not want thier Capital to be affected by Bitcoin's Volatility. Set up a Fiat Lightning channel and receive Sat payments, which get locked in as stable Fiat values. At the end of each business day, you can move your profits to self-custodial Lightning while your capital remains on Fiat channels for running your business.
For plug-and-play onboarding on Lightning, (No liquidity commitment) with self-custodial Lightning-grade privacy. Cryptographically enforced fraud-proof and auditability, achieved through a cross-signed state encoding.
- Back-up options :
Includes "BIP39 seed phrase only" for normal on-chain recovery, and "BIP39 + Local backup file" for full recovery, i.e., recover all your Lightning setups + on-chain balance.) The local backup file is saved on your device for use.
- Hardware wallet support (watch only)
- Coin Control
- Less than 30 mb file size (very lightweight)
- Android only (supports old versions as old as Android V.8)
- Fully open-sourced
Official website: https://valet.finance/
Install here: https://github.com/standardsats/valet/releases (Also available on F-Droid and Zapstore)
Detailed Setup Guide (Plan B Academy): https://planb.academy/en/tutorials/wallet/mobile/valet-447d94ab-143e-4598-8451-3229aee3a443
Want to learn more about the Fiat channel and how it advances Bitcoin's use as everyday money by bridging the fiat economy and the Bitcoin Standard through the creation of Bitcoin derivatives on the Lightning Network?
Join the conversation and contribute on Telegram: https://t.me/StandardSatsCommunity
Fiat Channel concept: https://standardsats.github.io/
Checkout our open-sourced Repo: https://github.com/standardsats/fiat-channels-rfc
How is it 2026 and this isn't an easily solved problem with lots of information on how to set it up!?
Yes, this is exactly where most teams tend to get stuck. Lightning is great at moving sats, but subscriptions need predictable billing, retries, accounting, and zero volatility (especially for Fiat-run businesses like the one you're talking about). So, basically, Visa UX on Bitcoin rails.
An approach that actually works is using Fiat Lightning channels (no tokens, no stablecoins). Users still pay in sats over Lightning, but the balance and billing logic stay stable in fiat inside the channel. That makes recurring charges, refunds, and accounting sane and auditable for a Fiat-run business.
We’ve been building this for merchant use cases exactly like subscriptions and cross-border SaaS.
Happy to share details if this is the kind of direction you’re exploring.
I'm not convinced that the financial system will happily integrate with censorship-resistant money. It may be compelled to do it if there is enough demand, but I believe it will be kicking and screaming and with much legislation
Eventually, the traditional financial system will integrate Bitcoin, albeit unhappily, because it does not have a choice.
It is both, but "not enough merchants/vendors who are willing to accept Bitcoin payments" is the current leading cause.
Demand often influences supply, and in this case, the merchants are the demand. The moment businesses across various industries, especially retail businesses, start demanding payment in Bitcoin, people will eventually begin to view it as a viable payment option. But then the problem of "unwillingness to spend Bitcoin will arise," because Bitcoin is viewed largely as a store of value, even by most core Bitcoiners, and I will tell you why.
Oftentimes, on the timelines, under posts that advocate for the need to spend Sats, you'll see subtle comments like "why'd I spend the better money? I'd rather spend the bad money and keep the better money", and you see this from acclaimed Bitcoiners. You then begin to ask, when do you then spend Bitcoin if we claim it is money?
Another subtle pointer to the fact that even we Bitcoiners do not necessarily regard Bitcoin as money is the continuous wrong application of the popular mantra "Stack Sats, HODL, never sell".
This is a good mantra that served its purpose in the early days when there was a need to have faith in this technology, hence the advocacy that people who believed in Bitcoin should hold on to it, which would probably convince others to do the same, growing faith and adoption, and strengthening the network.
However, at this time and now, that mantra often sounds like "Hold your Bitcoin because the price will increase." You also realize that it certainly shifted the talk from Bitcoin being money to people, including many Bitcoiners, speculating on Bitcoin's fiat price, the same Fiat we are hoping Bitcoin replaces as money.
The question then is, "If we are holding Bitcoin because we hope that it'd hit another fiat ATH, does it suggest that there's a price it may get to and we can then liquidate (cash out), or does it suggest that we do not actually believe in our claims of Bitcoin eventually replacing the traditional financial money?"
Merchants/vendors are mostly not willing to accept Bitcoin as payment, and even users are rarely willing to pay with Bitcoin.
On the merchant side, it is partly due to the not-so-clear regulatory borders of Bitcoin (but regulation clarity can always be improved as adoption increases), so we can say that it is largely because Bitcoin is volatile against Fiat money, and a lot of businesses run on the Fiat system. Accepting Bitcoin for payments means accepting volatility on any business capital kept in Bitcoin, and a majority of small and medium-scale businesses (the actual supposed catalysts) may not have the capacity to run such risks. Those who manage to accept Bitcoin for payments end up liquidating them instantly, which results in exchange fees and sometimes rigorous processes.
So if there's no immediate economic incentive to accept Bitcoin for payments (except for speculation that the fiat value may increase), why would a merchant that runs their business on the Fiat system do that, especially when they stand the risk of having unstable business capital, or paying extra fees to liquidate back to Fiat?
The same way a Bitcoin user would ask, "Why'd I spend Bitcoins that could potentially increase in Fiat value?"
So maybe the Fiat system will not necessarily be replaced by Bitcoin, but it could become the basis/standard/foundation on which fiat money runs, and perhaps that is when Bitcoin wins. Legendary Hal Finney of blessed memory also envisioned this when he opined that "in the future, there'll be banks running full Bitcoin reserves and issuing their own currencies backed by verifiable Bitcoin".
Eric Yakes and the Epoch team have largely also covered this in several of their reports on Bitcoin banking, explaining how this may unfold. Albeit predictions, a critical review will show that they're pointing in the right direction.
For Bitcoin to dominate everyday payment, it'd have to be much less volatile against Fiat or, say, stable. This will happen in the long run. Maybe in tens or hundreds of decades, but the process starts now. It starts by building products on Bitcoin money.
To enable merchants to comfortably accept Bitcoin for payments without worrying about volatility, we designed Fiat channels, a Lightning implementation that enables the creation of Bitcoin derivatives.
Fiat channels were coined from the original protocol, Hosted channels. It is a custodial lightning solution with a cryptographic fraud-proof.
Here are more resources:
https://standardsats.github.io/
https://github.com/standardsats/fiat-channels-rfc
This!!!!!!!!!!
Sadly, we have somehow lost touch with the understanding that "Bitcoin is money" and not a product.
Standard Sats has begun from fiat channels and pricing fiat in sats. What is lesser known is out aim to build markets for derivatives that would help to make this vision of procing everything in sats to the level of real commodity delivering. But this is too long and too risky way to go.
It is funny but I like direct confrontation "unbacked paper money". And by the way, China experimented with this a bit earlier.
Regarding the message. Maybe the next leap must be privacy. More broadly marketed. Apparently such provides as Spark make LN usage more transparent to operators as opposed to dedicated self custodial wallets.
Depending on the app, last usage and internet speed it may be nearly instant. You can't defy laws of physics, sorry. All "instant" variants means that the tech must be custodial or nearly custodial.
The guy became rich and changed his behavior which is totally fine.
However, he also confirms that fiat system works great for the richest.
Bitcoin is both a payment protocol and a commodity (the commodity is valuable because of the protocol). Only that both are inseparable, so the government chooses to stagnate the protocol by gagging the commodity.
It is a fight the government will lose, because the Bitcoin protocol is the sauce, and it cannot be gagged. It is also a massively better financial system than what the government instituted, and Humans have shown to always choose a superior system over time.
At best, the government enshrines the Bitcoin commodity as the basis of its Fiat financial system, thereby tapping into the efficiencies of Bitcoin's superior protocol, or at worst, they lose out entirely after a very prolonged struggle (perhaps decades or even centuries).
Mr Darthcoin, we live in a Fiat-run world while trying to make it a Bitcoin-run world. Imagine where businesses use Bitcoin as the underlying asset transferred when they make Fiat transactions. This is what the Fiat channel proposes.
It indirectly sews Bitcoin into the architecture of traditional finance, then suddenly everyone prefers to measure value directly in Sats and not in Fiat because over time less sats is exchanged for the same quantity of fiat.
Volatility against the prevalent unit of account (fiat) is an inherent feature of Bitcoin as a free market money. It will wane and reduce over time with more adoption and daily application in trade.
Using Bitcoin directly for trade and for value exchange, especially in a fiat-run world, will often require re-conversion into Fiat which ultimately renders Bitcoin as just a medium of storage of value, a value measured in fiat, not in Sats.
But having Bitcoin as the base asset for transferring fiat value means more people use Bitcoin, albeit indirectly making more people learn about the Lightning network, ask more questions, and hence learn about opting out.