Bitcoin Forum

Lightning network has made substantial progress and a number of merchants are now accepting lightning on their online stores. Most e-commerce websites will show a number of crypto options at checkout namely BTC/Lightning/Altcoins.

This creates a confusion among customers on which currency is more appropriate to send for payments. This article tries to address this below using a simple flowchart

https://i.ibb.co/5KCmdjq/1-XOh2-Bq7-Pd-IXQ1-To1pk-WGg.png (https://ibb.co/HhR60Pm)

https://blog.blockonomics.co/which-cyptocurrency-to-use-for-payments-f62f5e727886

Pretty great chart crypto micro guide for payment method, herein my location or country nowadays crypto enthusiasm can use bitcoin and some limited altcoins to use payment via lighting network (example is ethereum can use it to pay bill using local online crypto wallet)

This is a useful chart, I guess bitcoin cash is described as an altcoin so it is missing from the diagram. Could do with another diagram showing which alts to use e.g. litecoin, Montero, etc..

There are hundreds of altcoins providing instant payment confirmations like XRP, EOS, DOGE (almost). I don't feel there is much need of using Lightining when we have loads of altcoins fulfilling every need of users.
It is high time that we accept Bitcoin as merely an investment and forget to use it as daily payment method. Forking coin, introducing new networks isn't helping Bitcoin much, rather it is making Bitcoin more complicated. Moreover, it is reducing universal standard acceptance of Bitcoin and making wallets network specific.

Great piece of explaination on sharing the information about payment option from Micro to macro level payments.

To solve the piece level payment with bitcoin there continuous solutions has been introduced like Segwit, Lighting networks and so on. Whatever is the better we could have stick with the bitcoin to stay strong with this decentralized marketplace.

Then why is barely anyone using the stated altcoins to conduct payments?

Bitrefill's Lightning payments generated almost just as much transaction volume as ALL altcoins they accepted combined. Now let that sink in.

XRP army is only interested in waiting for institutions to use xRapid so they can sell their bags. EOS is controlled by a few Asian whales that occassionally pump and dump it. Doge is the only altcoin with a community behind it that somewhat focuses on actual usage of the coin.

Bitcoin isn't forking, scammers fork off because they want to rip off people and make millions in the process. Don't blame Bitcoin for that.

Lightning is instant and makes altcoins pretty much obsolete when it comes to instant transactions. Give it a try to see for yourself. :)

Can you share the reference for this ?


Yes, it is instant, which was also written in article. However, that leaves to a very narrow usecase of microtransactions.

Your private keys have to be online and your need to pay high bitcoin tx fee to get into lightning.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/9lv7kc/why_would_anyone_use_the_lightning_network/

I agree with most of your points presented here. There is one big reason why those are called as altcoins because they are not the main coin (in a movie they are not our  leading actors and can be categorized as supporting ones but part of the movie nonetheless). A person who has bitcoin will not think of converting it to altcoin just to be able to make a payment...he will look for any infrastructure (an app perhaps)available that can make payment fast, secure and convenient using, of course, bitcoin. No wonder there are many developmental experiments going on along this aspect for bitcoin because there is a demand for it. While we do appreciate what altcoins can offer, they are just there as alternatives and yes they are useful because they got their own niche market obviously.

You have been reading too many bitcoin dot com articles. Bitcoin despite all the problems people think it struggles with, has absorbed most of the user adoption in crypto, and this is just one aspect of it.

Another aspect to focus on is the number of active addresses that keeps going up consistently, while most other coins haven't seen much of an increase in that field at all.

Another thing is the daily value that moves back and forth on-chain. It keeps going up while altcoins remain stagnant. Bitcoin by far isn't perfect, but it's not nearly as bad as people think it is.

The confusion regarding which cryptocurrency to use for payments will scare a lot of people away from the LN project.Too many options make everything more complex and the customer might refuse to use crypto and choose a simpler payment option.

Why would more payment options cause confusion, and what this has to do with the lightning network? In order for a persons to use crypto, they must have knowledge and skills, ie they must use the brain - if someone want to use minimum amount of brain or to not use it at all, there's a good old fiat.

Only thing which is important when it comes to cryptocurrency payments is to know how much will be fee and how fast will be transaction. Based on that it is easy to select payment option which best suits the moment at which the payment is to be made.

Much more confusion is with all that mostly insignificant coin forks, which is not only confusing, but also can lead to losing coins because users send it to wrong chain.

Amen to that. You can almost accurately pinpoint a Bitcoin.com rhetoric just by the wording. It's really rich to hear forkers talking about reducing universal standard acceptance, really, really rich.

You know, the worst thing is all the couch commentators probably aren't even using Bitcoin that much. Or even their precious alts. They're spending and giving away as much as they can, and still if not for Bitcoin adopters, they wouldn't get much traction outside of their back-slapping antics.

P.S. Nice infographic OP, maybe consider retitling your post with the correct date.

I ain't saying that adoption of Bitcoin is decreasing and that of alts are increasing. I agree Bitcoin's adoption and popularity is increasing everyday. I am just stating the fact that using alts instead of btc could be better for crypto economies.
No matter what happens Bitcoin will always remain first and most beloved cryptocurrency. But that doesn't mean we have to use it for everything. When we have additional resources in the form of altcoins, isn't it better to use them for payment purposes rather than finding ways to make Bitcoin chain better?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ktorpey/2019/01/23/bitcoin-lightning-network-payments-have-already-surpassed-all-altcoins-at-this-retailer/

Bitrefill a few days ago announced that they opened the first 1BTC main net Lightning channel, which will also stimulate non micro payments. With time there will be 10BTC channels and up. It's only a matter of time, but yes, there is a certain degree of risk you have to take into consideration because the funds have to be online.

As for the fees, I don't really see it as much of a problem. Most people won't ever bother to use their own node anyway, so they will use a third party service that they can top up through a wide variety of fiat payment options.

Mostly we use bitcoin for payments.a lot of use of this bitcoin.now you can load cellphone,bills payment even in the restaurant,paying online product we puchase.we use bitcoin for payment.