Tuesday, January 11th 2022 - Issue #1143

Lightning on the number one finance app in the app store

Cash App (disclaimer: sponsor of the rag and the pod) has started rolling out the ability for users to pay Lightning Network invoices via the app. This is a massive step for the further normalization of the BP/LNP (Bitcoin Protocol/Lightning Network Protocol) stack. This is extremely bullish on multiple fronts.

It drives home to pedestrian Cash App users that Bitcoin is scaling in layers and there are ways to send sats in a much cheaper and faster fashion.

It highlights the type of high-quality product suite that can be built out when a company decides to focus on Bitcoin instead of getting distracted by the altcoin of the day.

And it brings Block's family of companies closer to interoperability that could lead to an explosion of bitcoin activity throughout the mainstream economy. The next logical step to further close the loop between Cash App and Square is to enable the ability of merchants to easily accept bitcoin and/or convert a portion or all of their fiat revenues into sats at the point of sale. Once this happens, and it's hard to imagine that it won't happen relatively soon considering the hyper-focus on Bitcoin Jack Dorsey has been exhibiting in public recently, it could have an insane affect on the demand for sats. Especially if this product gets rolled out as inflation continues its march higher.

Square point-of-sale systems are pretty ubiquitous at the moment and if you've come into contact with them on a regular basis recently you'll notice that Cash App integration has been picking up. I started paying for iced coffees at my local coffee shop using the Cash App directly from my phone recently. It isn't hard to see the leap from "point-and-scan to pay in dollars via Cash App" to "point-and-scan to pay in dollars or sats via Cash App". More importantly on the business side the needle will be moved massively in Bitcoin's favor when a merchant is able to hit the "convert x% of revenue to sats automatically" button.

If this process becomes as easy as hitting a button within a sleek user interface it could be an absolute game changer for the "merchant adoption" narrative that has been around Bitcoin for quite some time. Instead of trying to get a new bitcoin-native point of sale system into the hands of every merchant and forcing them to add a parallel UX flow to their existing processes, which can add a lot of friction, simply add sats to the existing flow and make the process of receiving sats and/or converting cuck bucks to sats as seamless as possible.

At first glance this is a very centralized way to get people into bitcoin as Square and Cash App are centralized third party custodians, but it isn't hard to imagine that - on the point of sales system specifically - Square could allow their merchants to upload an xpub key associated with a personal hardware wallet and connect a Lightning Node they control to their account similar to how BTCPay Server allows users to do it.

Slowly but surely bitcoin seeps further into the public psyche and Block is doing its part to make sure of it. Kudos to them for pushing the ball forward.

Final thought...

Ready for the 80 degree weather to return.

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Marty's Ƀent - January 11th, 2022 - Issue #1143

Lightning on the number one finance app in the app store

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Marty's Ƀent - January 10th, 2022 - Issue #1142

The Sat Standard - Bitcoin Weekly - Jan 1 2022

Marty's Ƀent - January 6th, 2022 - Issue #1141

Marty's Ƀent - January 5th, 2022 - Issue #1140

Marty's Ƀent - January 4th, 2022 - Issue #1139

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