ln_strike- a good sign for the Layer 2 Bitcoin Network.From fiat to btc in a sec

[TheBeardedBaby]

I already posted a comment on the  The Lightning Network FAQ thread but I don't really want to derail it. Anyway I didn't find any other thread regarding this announcement from yesterday and decided that this news deserves its own thread.

So Zap - a popular Lightning Network wallet platform came with announcement of their project called Strike.
What you do with Strike is you use your Credit or Debit cards (fiat) to send BTC in the Lightning network in matter of seconds.
This is another good step ahead for adopting BTC for day life off-chain payments.

Today, we are announcing Strike, an application that allows you to make Lightning payments with your bank account or debit card. Using Strike requires the following: a debit card or bank account. That’s it; no wallet, no node, no channels, no swaps, no liquidity management, no anything. It’s an application, sitting on top of our infrastructure piece Olympus, designed to usher in an era of Bitcoin that we believe has the best shot of achieving our mainstream hopes and desires.

The future plans :

So, here is the plan. We will continually widen our BETA every week, and start with US users only, until we feel comfortable opening up usage globally. Our goal is to be in a public BETA and put Strike on App Stores in the coming months. This will take a community effort.

Source of the quotes: https://medium.com/@JimmyMow/announcing-strike-by-zap-4f578c7c8984

[franky1]

sorry not seconds..
sorry not btc either.(bitcoin has no millisats)
btc has a blockchain and units of measure in 8 decimals...
.. LN does not
LN is a separate network not a btc layer. LN is used for multiple currencies.

this announcement is just promoting zap. not the btc network
..moving on

i dare anyone to take the time to type in card details and a true btc blockchain address and time how long it takes to see confirmed btc on a btc explorer.. it aint seconds

[DooMAD]

Anyway I didn't find any other thread regarding this announcement from yesterday and decided that this news deserves its own thread.

The announcement touts the tax advantages, but isn't quite clear on how that part works.  I'm assuming it's not a taxable event because of instant conversion, so there's no potential to make a gain/loss on the market rate?

*usual drivel*

And what straws would you be desperately clutching at if they had made LN with just 8 decimal places?

As always, I'm terribly sorry that people in the real world want to develop LN.  It's an awful shame that no one else is living in your fantasy dream world who even wants to attempt to implement any of the ideas you think are so great.

Actually, that's a lie.  I'm not sorry and it's not a shame at all.

[andulolika]

I were in sweden and found some money left in my bank account, I entered safello (even if normaly use localbitcoins and lbc vendors accept swish too) and proceeded "swished" the money to them, literaly in the same second i sent the "swish" i heard ding in my bitcoin wallet, without the need for LN.

swish is a easy way to send and recieve money from people on your phone number linked to bank.

[gentlemand]

What's going to be the deal with this and compliance? Is the person proposing it operating a company that'll run it? It is effectively an exchange in itself.

I can imagine banks spraying out an army of kittens at the idea of this.

[Dabs]

Transactions are seen within seconds. Confirmation of the transaction in a block is what takes 10 minutes (more or less).

Then it also said "off chain" = those will not appear in any block explorer until much later, and you probably will not see it as an individual transaction, but the combination of all the transactions that are committed since that time.

If it's eventually settled on the first layer, on the BTC blockchain, then it must still be BTC right? Or tell me why not?

[DooMAD]

If it's eventually settled on the first layer, on the BTC blockchain, then it must still be BTC right? Or tell me why not?

It's still BTC, the millisats are just rounded off at the moment.  It could be other coins too, technically, and then the transaction settled on the first layer would be on that coin's chain.  But since the announcement makes no reference to Litecoin, it's fair to assume they're only talking about Bitcoin for this app.  The two trolls in the topic are just taking potshots because one is bitter about scaling, while the other is constantly trying (and failing) to convince people that Proof-of-Stake is better.  Pay them no mind.

[Dabs]

Derivatives make the world go round. No one trades gold or dollars, but it's considered as dollars when you use your credit card, even though it can be reversed half a year later. Eventually the entire bitcoin ecosystem, including LN will have all these mechanisms in place, that merchants will accept your payment as good as bitcoin, and not mind paying a very small percentage as fees to the aggregators and miners and whatever else needs to get paid.

[DooMAD]

LN=Bank

You need a new catchphrase, this one is getting pretty old and predictable.  It's also a myth that has been thoroughly debunked:

Are LN hubs the same as banks?

I hope by now it’s clear the answer is — no, not at all.

The most important difference in my view is that, unlike banks, LN hubs don’t hold your money. Your money is stored in a channel, anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain, and only you can authorize its movement. In any case that the channel counterparty refuses to cooperate, due to malice or incompetence, you can unilaterally close the channel and receive the money back as normal bitcoins.

This ability needn’t be exercised to be useful. Simply knowing that you can easily quit encourages the counterparty to behave and offer a good service. And it alone means that even in the extreme case of a completely centralized lightning “network” with a single hub connected to everyone, this is a marked improvement over traditional banking.

Meaning, even if your prognostication of Lightning becoming centralised did come true (and there's no sign yet that it will become centralised), it would still offer you greater control over your wealth than a bank does.  If you can't grasp this incredibly simple concept, you are not qualified to comment further (but I suspect you'll keep babbling nonsense regardless).

So if you're quite finished attempting to derail the topic, let's get back to the part where the developers of Strike chose Bitcoin and Lightning for their app.  Notice how they didn't choose any of the crapcoins you repeatedly claim are "better".  That's because, here in the real world, people care about the strength and integrity of the network.  They don't want to place their wealth on weak and insecure chains.  They don't want to use coins that no merchants will accept as payment because they're nothing more than a novelty or gimmick.  They don't want to use networks where there's only one or two developers who might get bored and leave the project in limbo.  And these are only some of the reasons why Bitcoin and Lightning are the preferred platform for so many projects.  And when people develop utilities like this, it helps Bitcoin and Lightning grow larger still.  The momentum will continue to build and nothing (least of all a pathetic troll like you) can stop it.

Thanks for playing!

[amishmanish]

So Zap - a popular Lightning Network wallet platform came with announcement of their project called Strike.
What you do with Strike is you use your Credit or Debit cards (fiat) to send BTC in the Lightning network in matter of seconds.
This is another good step ahead for adopting BTC for day life off-chain payments.

Today, we are announcing Strike, an application that allows you to make Lightning payments with your bank account or debit card. Using Strike requires the following: a debit card or bank account. That’s it; no wallet, no node, no channels, no swaps, no liquidity management, no anything. It’s an application, sitting on top of our infrastructure piece Olympus, designed to usher in an era of Bitcoin that we believe has the best shot of achieving our mainstream hopes and desires.

From the problem that Jack solved using this app, it proves useful from a pro-BTC merchant's point of view than the customer's. A pro-BTC customer would probably already have an LN wallet with funds on it to make an LN payment. The app becomes useful if the merchant has an LN setup like his parent's shop while the customers don't care how they pay. The shop asks them to install the app and then use it for payments.

Why would a customer prefer the app over making a Debit card payment on a swipe machine/ PoS? Apps like Strike simplify the mechanics to use BTC provided the motivation to use is already there.

[figmentofmyass]

What's going to be the deal with this and compliance? Is the person proposing it operating a company that'll run it? It is effectively an exchange in itself.

I can imagine banks spraying out an army of kittens at the idea of this.

interesting question. at first glance, it seems more like a payment processor (like bitpay in reverse) than an exchange. but it's actually a lot more versatile, since invoices can be effectively used as buys and sells:

Can Strike be used to buy bitcoin? Sure, create an invoice from your existing wallet and pay it. After completion, you’ll have less fiat in Strike and more bitcoin in your wallet.

Can Strike be used to sell bitcoin? Sure, create a request in Strike and send to it from your wallet. After completion, you’ll have more fiat in Strike and less bitcoin in your wallet.

i really don't understand how it works under the hood. where is the BTC to fulfill invoices being sourced from? it seems like there must be a centralized market making mechanism to be able to instantly fulfill the requests.

[Dabs]

Broadcast an old transaction in LN, and the other LN user can confiscate your entire amount in the channel.

Don't do that, that just means you're trying to break the system, and the other LN can confiscate your entire amount as deterrent from someone trying to cheat the system.

Know what you're doing, in other words. It has happened to a few other users but it's all their fault really.

[DooMAD]

Broadcast an old transaction in LN, and the other LN user can confiscate your entire amount in the channel.

Don't do that, that just means you're trying to break the system, and the other LN can confiscate your entire amount as deterrent from someone trying to cheat the system.

Know what you're doing, in other words. It has happened to a few other users but it's all their fault really.

And if LN had been designed without revocations in place, the detractors and trolls would have a really easy job, because then all you would need to do is always spend from an outdated commitment and easily defraud people.  The current implementation of Lightning would not be possible without revocations.  So it only makes the trolls look even more ridiculous and ill-informed when they claim that the very part that makes it secure is somehow a bad thing for users.

We'll also have to see what happens with Eltoo, since there may be an alternative way to handle maintaining channel states.  I look forward to the trolls' feeble attempts to undermine that one as well.  

Can Strike be used to buy bitcoin? Sure, create an invoice from your existing wallet and pay it. After completion, you’ll have less fiat in Strike and more bitcoin in your wallet.

Can Strike be used to sell bitcoin? Sure, create a request in Strike and send to it from your wallet. After completion, you’ll have more fiat in Strike and less bitcoin in your wallet.

i really don't understand how it works under the hood. where is the BTC to fulfill invoices being sourced from? it seems like there must be a centralized market making mechanism to be able to instantly fulfill the requests.

I can see how that would be a tricky one from a business perspective.  On the one hand, they want to assure people it's a legitimate business model, but on the other hand, they probably can't give away the finer details until they're a little more established, in order to avoid another company playing copycat and ripping off their business model.  They'll naturally want to make the most of first-mover advantage.

[mk4]

Banks & LN both hold your money,

Based off this argument, since I hold my own money and my own bitcoin(none-custodial), then holy crap so it means I'm a bank too!?

Also, whatever your opinions are concerning LN(or Liquid, or future layer2's), you're never forced to use it. No one is!

[squatter]

Why would a customer prefer the app over making a Debit card payment on a swipe machine/ PoS?

It depends how much incentive (i.e. discount) the merchant can give. In Jack Mallers' post, he gave the example of merchants in the cannabis industry:

Those processing payments in the cannabis industry charge between 5%-15%, and are known to be unreliable and unstable.

That implies that merchants already have the margins to give customers 5%-15% discounts if their processing costs could be brought close to 0%. It's a big enough discount to get people to start using the app, since it leverages a payment rail they were planning on using anyway -- their debit card:

My parents were already running a BTCPay Server instance and offered a 10% discount for anyone who paid in BTC, as it was so much easier for us to accept. The problem was, no customer was able to get a Lightning wallet set up to make payments ranging from $0.10–$500. With Strike, this changes immediately. All you need is the app and a debit card.

We passed Strike around to a few frequent customers and family friends, telling them if you use this app, you get a 10% discount. It worked. Customers young and old were using Strike to shop at our store, getting a discount, and helping our business.

It's pretty cool, but the model probably won't work for lower margin businesses that don't have the same payment processing problems.

[sana54210]

Banks & LN both hold your money,

Based off this argument, since I hold my own money and my own bitcoin(none-custodial), then holy crap so it means I'm a bank too!?

Also, whatever your opinions are concerning LN(or Liquid, or future layer2's), you're never forced to use it. No one is!

Yes indubitably you are your own bank. Each of us have to be our own banks. What banks mean in short is "a financial establishment that uses money deposited for making investments, currency exchange, etc." We being with bitcoins, have the ability to make investments and also to exchange our currency into a number of coins/currencies, etc and even we might even provide loans to some people so why could we not call ourselves as bank? We do are banks but on a small scale.

We do not care about other's money but we do take maximum care about our money. Negative impacts from any people might never affect the use cases of LN as it completely depends on us whether we want ourselves to gain benefits from this or we just want to skip them.

[Wind_FURY]

sorry not seconds..

In Lightning, franky1.

sorry not btc either.(bitcoin has no millisats)
btc has a blockchain and units of measure in 8 decimals...
.. LN does not
LN is a separate network not a btc layer. LN is used for multiple currencies.

It's Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's Layer 2, AKA the Lightning Network, has payment channels with real Bitcoins locked in them, that can be settled in the Bitcoin blockchain anytime.

this announcement is just promoting zap. not the btc network
..moving on

Nit-picking are we?

i dare anyone to take the time to type in card details and a true btc blockchain address and time how long it takes to see confirmed btc on a btc explorer.. it aint seconds

It's about Lightning payments, franky1, not Bitcoin blockchain payments.

[TheBeardedBaby]

No matter what arguments you have against it, seems like more and more people adopting off-chain payments as a solution for quick and cheep transactions. This can be only positive thing for bitcoin in general, which can lead to a bit more mass adoption. It promise to solves the big taxation problem for countries like USA, this will be a big advantage and hopefully more merchants can start adopting crypto as alternative payment.

[redsun114]

Lightening networks are really giving a boost to the bitcoin transactions. Even sending bitcoins is getting a few clicks away kind of thing which might surely make a lot of people start adopting bitcoins. This "strike" might even be more profitable for a lot of people who would like to spend their FIAT in buying bitcoins. They could actually buy bitcoins in just few seconds after their card performs the transaction.

This would also be a good start in order to start regulating bitcoins into centralized local jobs which are mostly related to fiat but now, bitcoins could be turned in into such kind of job roles. Payment via bitcoin can also be started to the employers which might even directly load their bank accounts for receiving bitcoins.

[Dabs]

It boils down to the choices you make. You can use these third party services or not. On the other hand, they will try to entice you to use their services by offering discounts or promotions, and of course, they have to remain profitable otherwise no business will survive long term if it does not have any source of revenue or profits.

You'll want to use them when a lot of people are using them. But you still have the choice not to use them and use your own off-chain solution or someone else's. Or just stick to on chain.