Thanks for the informative piece. there is one part that I'm struggling to understand. Could you please run me through how you can send USD over the bitcoin network at zero cost?
I can see it work if you exchange USD for BTC, send BTC and then convert BTC back to USD, but I understand that there are costs involved in converting between BTC and fiat currencies. Did I misunderstand?
Thanks, Stefan. Great question. Sending *dollars* over the *Bitcoin Network* at zero cost for immediate settlement is possible today because of the Lightning Network. This is a layer 2 scaling solution built on top of Bitcoin. If you want to access this functionality I suggest you or anyone reading download the Stike App. Stike (leveraging Lightning) is able to convert dollars to bitcoin on the Bitcoin network. It then zips the bitcoin across the world, and when it lands in its recipient's wallet overseas, it will convert to euros, yen, etc at current exchange rates and no fee. Strike is essentially leveraging the liquidity and openness of the Bitcoin network to achieve this. They say great tech is like magic. Nothing new here. And when this achieves scale, nobody will be asking how it works. Sort of like how very few understand how wires, visa transactions, venmo, paypal work today.
We can think of Bitcoin's base layer as being similar to a wire transfer - use it for large transfers. And transactions on Lightning as like a Visa transfer - use it for small purchases like buying coffee, etc.
The key point here is that we've opened up a global monetary settlement layer that anyone can access. The implications of this are enormous at scale. We are at the very, very early stages today.
Thanks for the informative piece. there is one part that I'm struggling to understand. Could you please run me through how you can send USD over the bitcoin network at zero cost?
I can see it work if you exchange USD for BTC, send BTC and then convert BTC back to USD, but I understand that there are costs involved in converting between BTC and fiat currencies. Did I misunderstand?
Thanks, Stefan. Great question. Sending *dollars* over the *Bitcoin Network* at zero cost for immediate settlement is possible today because of the Lightning Network. This is a layer 2 scaling solution built on top of Bitcoin. If you want to access this functionality I suggest you or anyone reading download the Stike App. Stike (leveraging Lightning) is able to convert dollars to bitcoin on the Bitcoin network. It then zips the bitcoin across the world, and when it lands in its recipient's wallet overseas, it will convert to euros, yen, etc at current exchange rates and no fee. Strike is essentially leveraging the liquidity and openness of the Bitcoin network to achieve this. They say great tech is like magic. Nothing new here. And when this achieves scale, nobody will be asking how it works. Sort of like how very few understand how wires, visa transactions, venmo, paypal work today.
We can think of Bitcoin's base layer as being similar to a wire transfer - use it for large transfers. And transactions on Lightning as like a Visa transfer - use it for small purchases like buying coffee, etc.
The key point here is that we've opened up a global monetary settlement layer that anyone can access. The implications of this are enormous at scale. We are at the very, very early stages today.