Hi Clay, what are your thoughts on the idea of USDT on Bitcoin as proposed by Tether?

I'd think this way better: "They Pay in Bitcoin" "You get paid in dollars" Completely removes any form of ambiguity and confusion - Bitcoin sounds confusing enough already, promoting it's usage as money shouldn't imo

These are pretty cool.

You guys have done great work, especially with PicknPay; that particular onboarding has a huge impact in driving the institutional acceptance of Bitcoin for payments. > but we are changing this and running pro-Bitcoin campaigns with them - If you don't mind, what is the actual reality with merchants you've tried to convince to accept Bitcoin directly via your campaigns? I mean, "What are the real bottlenecks these merchants cite as a deterrent for accepting Bitcoin directly"? I will guess: - - Volatility issues (Main bottleneck) - Unclear regulatory policies around Bitcoin, especially about taxation (CGT) - Then there's also the issue of "lack of technical know-how", and the disheartening case of "fraud/crime" association with Bitcoin. The first two are the most common issues we've seen from our research surveys.

Having said the above, I also agree with the point that "unwillingness to spend Bitcoin by Bitcoiners is also the cause" However, it is relatable why this is the case; Bitcoin is the hardest, scarcest monetary asset in the world, with price volatility. The volatility of Bitcoin is the common ground for which both merchants and Bitcoiners might be reluctant to accept and pay in it respectively. Most merchants run on Fiat, accepting and holding Bitcoin means possibility that their Fiat capital dips following a Bitcoin dip, and for Bitcoiners, nobody will be happy to spend their Bitcoin when the Fiat value is down, especially if they acquired such Bitcoin when the Fiat value is higher. So the ultimate solution is making Bitcoin the base layer for moving fiat value. This helps the merchant accept Bitcoin confidently, and also ensures that any Bitcoiner can pay with Bitcoin at any point in time. One of such solutions is "Fiat Channels", a lightning protocol specification that enables the creation of synthetic assets on Lightning. There are several other implementations like this such as "Stable Channels". With these protocols, merchants could accept Bitcoin while retaining the "stable" Fiat value of the Sats as at when received. MoneyGadger may set up a Host and offer these services to her clients, ensuring that Sats continue to exchange hands while carrying Fiat values across. Fiat Channels: https://github.com/standardsats/fiat-channels-rfc

By your website, the summary of what MoneyBadger does is that it helps Bitcoin users convert QR codes of your affiliated Fiat payment processors to Lightning invoices so that they could pay with Bitcoin. Awesome service! If the above knowledge of what MoneyBadger does is correct, then, the question becomes "how many of these merchants you serve actually understand what Bitcoin is, and boldly signal its acceptance in their businesses? - That is when we can say that they accept Bitcoin payments It get's even better if they accept Sats directly. Please, if our understanding of your service is wrong, kindly correct it.

IMMORTAN LIBRARY & HOSTED CHANNEL A week ago, our team member gave a talk at the 13th Socratic seminar of the #bitdev community in Abuja, Nigeria, during the monthly Bitcoin developers meetup. During the session, he introduced IMMORTAN Library and Hosted channels, the two Lightning implementations designed to foster Bitcoin adoption in local communities by advancing self-custodial mobile Lightning usage and cost-effective, community-focused Lightning onboarding. Immortan is a lightweight, mobile Lightning library with advanced privacy features, robust channel-recovery options, and redundancy against frequent force-channel closures. Hosted channel, on the other hand, is a custodial Lightning channel protocol specification. Hosted channels enable anonymous custodial channels to be opened by any node (Host). Like a normal Lightning channel, Hosted channels are fully private because preimage generation, onion formation, and route finding all still happen on the client side, whilst the Host (routing Node) holds the funds and does the job of forwarding payments for the client. Valet Bitcoin is a wallet software that currently runs on Immortan Library and Hosted channels, forked and maintained by . Learn more about Immortan Library and Hosted channels by checking out the project GitHub links: IMMORTAN LIBRARY: https://github.com/standardsats/immortan HOSTED CHANNELS: https://github.com/standardsats/hosted-channels-rfc Install Valet from , , or directly from GitHub, and try out Hosted channels: https://github.com/standardsats/valet/releases. We invite everyone to join the discussions and contribute to this project. Join us on Telegram chat, where we share insights and build this together: https://t.me/StandardSatsCommunity Big shout out to the organizers of #bitdev #Abuja for the opportunity to share our work with the community, and particularly , for powering these interactive and impactful metups across multiple cities in Africa. #bitcoin #bitdev #lightning

Unfortunately, everyone will not self-custody Bitcoin, and that is fine. The ultimate thing is that, if and when banks begin to use Bitcoin as the reserve asset for issuing paper currencies (e-cash, Fiat-channels assets), they'll hardly ever run fractional banking, and if they do, they'll be at risk of irredeemable bank run since there wouldn't be the Fed back-stop to fall on because the Fed can't mint more Bitcoins. Users will be more attracted to banks running full reserve banking. Also, banks who run fractional banking to the level it is done today, may have to ensure that their users are consenting to the fractional banking practice, and that they understand the risk. This also means that users who choose to take the risk will benefit adequately in the reward via good deposit interests unlike pennies being handed out today.

> The onus is frankly on the suppliers of good and services to demand Bitcoin and reject fiat. That's how Thier's law works. This!!!!!! 👆 If merchants actively demand Bitcoin even as one of the payment options, then more Bitcoiners will be willing to spend it. And no, it is not demanding it, and immediately converting it to Fiat. If so, people will rather just pay with Fiat. However, the next best way to make Bitcoin money is to make it the base asset powering Fiat monetary value, like what we did with Fiat Lightning channels, here: https://standardsats.github.io/ Protocol Implementation: https://github.com/standardsats/fiat-channels-rfc

- Not enough merchants are willing to accept Bitcoin Or - Not enough Bitcoiners are willing to spend Bitcoin Which is the problem?