LL⚡️3 - Bitcoin Ecommerce Fiat Monsters
The fiat monsters appear to be hunting down hosted bitcoin payment gateways. Making it harder than obtaining a Strike credit card gateway.
Quick Zaps
⚡️ Podcasting 2.0 value4value read about it here
⚡️ Want to dive deeper on Bitcoin Lightning? https://bolt.fun
⚡️ Feed chickens with live video and Lightning https://pollofeed.com
Long Form
The fiat regulation monsters are working their way around.
I came to a realization about hosted bitcoin payment gateways this week. The fiat regulation monster is coming for them. They are quietly striking fear in the businesses that offer bitcoin gateways. Some of my normal options are making it harder for people to use them thanks to KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti Money Laundering).
What does it mean? We need to focus on self hosted solutions.
When? Now.
I was using a hosted payment gateway because I don’t want to worry about managing a node in terms of hardware, software, security, being online and liquidity.
The amount of time and knowledge these things require is serious on its own, let alone trying to build a brand with products and services.
It has been reasonably easy to set up WooCommerce and offer bitcoin payments for a while. But recently with Lightning making the payments instant, more people have been paying attention and asking to use it.
Just last month I had people adding Lightning payment options in under 20 mins, end to end.
But this week, all that changed. It has become longer and harder.
It has thrown me into a loop, looking for the opportunity to keep it as simple as possible. I have come across a temporary solution that is not as secure as I would like.
And I need to sink a lot more time into understanding either
A hosted node on a cloud.
Or I learn how to best setup and host my own node, which is not as simple as it sounds, due to the security challenges that go with it.
Right now, they all have pro’s and con’s as it is still early days. But I believe the challenges will be solved, and soon.
I feel like I have never seen the pace we see now for development, especially on LIghtning. The competition is fierce. I’m not sure what is driving these guys, but I like it and love seeing the rapid response to issues that come up.
I think like Umbrel, we will see an innovation in the BTCpay server self hosted payment node come about that makes it easy. With just a little research, there are some smart guys working on solving the issues to use best practices and automate the processes.
This is the frontier. Money is the voting power, but more so the money we use and how we use it. And maybe that is the motivation. Maybe the people who are innovating have been burned by the theft of fiat. Maybe they can see the corruption and have decided to build a better game.
I’m not sure there is better hope.
Peace and Bitcoin