When trying to create more Bitcoin payments, we need to meet people where they are. We need to build for people who are experiencing real payments pain.
The American Bitcoin community focuses so much on retail payments in the States, but y’all, people in the US aren’t experiencing payments pain. At least not anywhere near enough to make them adopt a new payments network and unit of account. The US won’t be first in line for this one. At least not for buying a gallon of milk at the corner store. We may have more success with niche things like gaming.
And let me bring up Gresham’s Law once again. To avoid a debate on the exact letter of this ‘law’ I’ll claim a variation on Gresham’s Law and call it Hannah’s law😉 I’ve been on about it for years and please don’t dismiss this simple reality; if you are standing in a shop and can chose between spending two different currencies, you are going to spend the one you don’t like and hold the one that you do like. And this is why Bitcoin payments haven’t taken off in the States but Bitcoin as an investment very much has.
So are we doomed? Of course not! We just have to go where we are needed. ...and where are we needed? Well what advantages do we have?
Decentralization. Bitcoin is so decentralized that it is nearly public infrastructure. And that matters a LOT. Other chains are much less decentralized and so much more risky. Those chains will be adapted to serve influential people in that jurisdiction/organization and not necessarily you or your users use case. Platform risk. Bitcoin has the lowest platform risk.
Speed and affordability. We just trounce the credit card networks. But, it’s not noticeable enough of a fee difference to entice the comfortable to take on switching costs. Where this will help us is with the bots. The bots aren’t bothered by changing their habits. They will chose the most efficient option. Also we can scale the way other chains can’t. So sooner or later they will run into scaling trouble and we will be here.
Where we run into trouble…
Volatility and unit of account. There is a pretty big overlap on the Venn diagram of those experiencing payments pain and those without disposable income. Those who need our tech often can’t weather a drop in the price of Bitcoin. And, us, sitting here in our Bitcoin bubble, have already managed the psychological difficulty of switching units of accounts. But we are not the normies that we are building for. That unit of account can be a massive psychological barrier.
So what to do? We need a way to add a stable unit of account onto the Bitcoin payments network. Stablecoins are the obvious choice, but there are other things out there too.
So if we know that we need to meet people where they are, where do we go and what do we build? We go to places that currently have currency volatility and/or have payments pain, and we build easy to use applications that include a stable unit of account option. We build applications where users can see a USD denominated payment and push send and know absolutely nothing about channels and liquidity.
Cough **Wavelength** cough.
The American Bitcoin community focuses so much on retail payments in the States, but y’all, people in the US aren’t experiencing payments pain. At least not anywhere near enough to make them adopt a new payments network and unit of account. The US won’t be first in line for this one. At least not for buying a gallon of milk at the corner store. We may have more success with niche things like gaming.
And let me bring up Gresham’s Law once again. To avoid a debate on the exact letter of this ‘law’ I’ll claim a variation on Gresham’s Law and call it Hannah’s law😉 I’ve been on about it for years and please don’t dismiss this simple reality; if you are standing in a shop and can chose between spending two different currencies, you are going to spend the one you don’t like and hold the one that you do like. And this is why Bitcoin payments haven’t taken off in the States but Bitcoin as an investment very much has.
So are we doomed? Of course not! We just have to go where we are needed. ...and where are we needed? Well what advantages do we have?
Decentralization. Bitcoin is so decentralized that it is nearly public infrastructure. And that matters a LOT. Other chains are much less decentralized and so much more risky. Those chains will be adapted to serve influential people in that jurisdiction/organization and not necessarily you or your users use case. Platform risk. Bitcoin has the lowest platform risk.
Speed and affordability. We just trounce the credit card networks. But, it’s not noticeable enough of a fee difference to entice the comfortable to take on switching costs. Where this will help us is with the bots. The bots aren’t bothered by changing their habits. They will chose the most efficient option. Also we can scale the way other chains can’t. So sooner or later they will run into scaling trouble and we will be here.
Where we run into trouble…
Volatility and unit of account. There is a pretty big overlap on the Venn diagram of those experiencing payments pain and those without disposable income. Those who need our tech often can’t weather a drop in the price of Bitcoin. And, us, sitting here in our Bitcoin bubble, have already managed the psychological difficulty of switching units of accounts. But we are not the normies that we are building for. That unit of account can be a massive psychological barrier.
So what to do? We need a way to add a stable unit of account onto the Bitcoin payments network. Stablecoins are the obvious choice, but there are other things out there too.
So if we know that we need to meet people where they are, where do we go and what do we build? We go to places that currently have currency volatility and/or have payments pain, and we build easy to use applications that include a stable unit of account option. We build applications where users can see a USD denominated payment and push send and know absolutely nothing about channels and liquidity.
Cough **Wavelength** cough.