Breaking: Bitcoin Lightning Network to be used in fiat transfers between EU and

[GetBlock.io]

Bitcoin Lightning Network to be deployed for fiat transfers between the UK, Europe, and African countries.

Coin Corner and Bitnobi have launched a new application, Send Globally, which enables transfers between British Pounds $GBP or Euros $EUR and $NGN, $KES, and $GHS, currencies of Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana.

Bitcoin Lightning Network is a Bitcoin’s second-layer solution that allows off-chain computations for fast and cost-efficient transactions.
The transactions are automatically converted into BTC and the selected local currency when deposited into the receiver’s bank account or wallet.

With the Lightning Network users will be able to avoid high costs and fees. In the last year, 14.1% of global remittance payments were allocated to the Sub-Saharan African region.

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[Oshosondy]

That is true, the news is a week old now as I read it from this source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-to-be-used-in-fiat-transfers-between-eu-and-africa

This is one of the benefit of bitcoin in which fiat would be converted to bitcoin as someone send the fiat to another person in another country which would be converted to the fiat of the country it is sent to. That is a very good idea and it shows how bitcoin development has helped in this world more than expect.

Blockchain helped in several fields, now it is lightning network.

[franky1]

for temp workers currently working but not born in UK/EU that want to remit funds back home because they have no UK/EU bank account that allows international wires.. then there are many services available that come with fee's where using crypto can save.. if they can find a way to deposit into the service for free to first then use a crypto service
(its not all fluffy clouds and dandelions of utopia)

however if you do have for instance a uk bank. its fast and free.
https://www.hsbc.co.uk/international/money-transfer/

No HSBC fees for sending money abroad

LN is still a flawed network with alot of liquidity bottlenecks

spending "coffee" amounts has a near 100% payment success rate, but half a months salary has less guarantees of success. and sometimes comes with higher fees than promised, and can have issues with middle man routers. so dont be expectant of the overly promised under reality experience

oh and LN is not bitcoin. bitcoin does not leave and re-enter the bitcoin network.
bitcoins stays and never leaves the bitcoin network
 the LN network is something else.

much like the IMF SDR is not the same as citizens bank account pounds euros

also this news is not some nations ratified payment system
its just some guys in UK/EU trading their balance with some african guys balance.

just be risk aware and do research

this article might aswell be talking about custodian balance, sidechain tokens, subnetwork IOU's (oh wait it is talking about the third)

[OcTradism]

Bitcoin Lightning Network to be deployed for fiat transfers between the UK, Europe, and African countries.

Bitcoin Lightning Network is a layer 2 solution for Bitcoin blockchain to transfer Bitcoin.

How can it be used to transfer fiat money cross countries?

Did you want to discuss that a technology for Lightning Network can be applied for fiat money transfer too?

Developers will have to clone open source code from Lightning Network to build other layers for fiat money transfer.

[Poker Player]

Bitcoin Lightning Network to be deployed for fiat transfers between the UK, Europe, and African countries.

Bitcoin Lightning Network is a layer 2 solution for Bitcoin blockchain to transfer Bitcoin.

How can it be used to transfer fiat money cross countries?

Using the blockchain. I don't know the technical explanation in detail but Jack Mallers' Strike has been doing it for some time now. You can watch interviews with him on Youtube, he's a young guy but very passionate and seems to know what he's doing.

[pooya87]

This is one of the benefit of bitcoin in which fiat would be converted to bitcoin as someone send the fiat to another person in another country which would be converted to the fiat of the country it is sent to.

This is not how bitcoin is supposed to be used though which is through centralized third party services with a lot of intermediary fees! The correct way would have been to earn bitcoin directly and send it themselves without needing a middle man.

[Kakmakr]

How is this any different from MoneyGram or Western Union? Yes, the fees might be less than other remittance services for international money transfers, but like #pooya87 said.... they are still using a centralized service to do those transfers. 

What are stopping them to use their own Lightning hub and doing the transfers without any centralized service? Yes, it is convenient and easier to do, but they still rely on a centralized service. (Rule #1 : Control your own Private keys)

[mendace]

Yes, that's right, and this will be a great help for those who have used services such as money transfers to date to send money to their family members because this kind of service has very high rates, while with Lightning Network they can be transferred quickly but above all with low fees.

[Oshosondy]

This is not how bitcoin is supposed to be used though which is through centralized third party services with a lot of intermediary fees! The correct way would have been to earn bitcoin directly and send it themselves without needing a middle man.

This is true but we can also see it this way, that bitcoin technology makes fiat transaction to be low for cross border payment, what might have not been possible. I understand that people are making things to be centralized and making money from it, but the lightning network is not centralized, just that fiat is centralized right from the beginning it was created and this innovation does not affect bitcoin as it remains decentralized.

[pooya87]

This is not how bitcoin is supposed to be used though which is through centralized third party services with a lot of intermediary fees! The correct way would have been to earn bitcoin directly and send it themselves without needing a middle man.

This is true but we can also see it this way, that bitcoin technology makes fiat transaction to be low for cross border payment, what might have not been possible. I understand that people are making things to be centralized and making money from it, but the lightning network is not centralized, just that fiat is centralized right from the beginning it was created and this innovation does not affect bitcoin as it remains decentralized.

Maybe for small fiat amounts but for larger amounts I don't think it is actually cheap because of all the intermediary fees.

Let's say you wanted to transfer $50,000 abroad and decided to use bitcoin.
You first have to wire that money to a centralized exchange that could cost from $10 to $100.
Then you have to buy bitcoin with it and with a 0.2% fee you'll have to pay $100.
Then you have to withdraw those bitcoins and pay something like 0.0005BTC (~$8.5) which some exchanges charge.
Then the receiver has to do all that in reverse to convert the bitcoins to fiat meaning they have to pay 0.2% trading fee or about $100 to convert bitcoin to fiat.
Then they have to withdraw the fiat to their bank and pay another bank transfer fee another $10 to $100!

I also assumed the price is fixed otherwise some platforms have a big spread and you buy bitcoin at a higher price that you sell it.

This is why correct way is to only stick to bitcoin. If you wanted to send $50,000 worth of bitcoin that is 2.969BTC you can send that with about 0.00000200BTC fee and that's it!

[franky1]

Bitcoin Lightning Network to be deployed for fiat transfers between the UK, Europe, and African countries.

Bitcoin Lightning Network is a layer 2 solution for Bitcoin blockchain to transfer Bitcoin.

How can it be used to transfer fiat money cross countries?

Using the blockchain. I don't know the technical explanation in detail but Jack Mallers' Strike has been doing it for some time now. You can watch interviews with him on Youtube, he's a young guy but very passionate and seems to know what he's doing.

LN does not use the bitcoin blockchain
thats the point of it. its not a bitcoin blockchain scheme

its the same as using other tokens of LBTC(liquid) Wbtc(wrapped bitcoin)
thy are not bitcoin they are emulating/faking being bitcoin by being a token on a different network

the units of value measure inside a LN routed payment(the online payment) are measured in msats.
a thing that is 11 decimals of 1btc
bitcoin only goes to 8 decimals.. thus its not bitcoin

..
as for strike
he tried to do something with elsalvador in spetember 2021
yep same promotion as this topic.
problem was strike failed el salvador and el salvador dropped strike and chose to use a CEX as the custodian of customer funds becasue LN failed citizens of el salvador

please do some research

[NotATether]

Hopefully, the fintechs running this don't go out of business as so many of them have gone in recent years, owing to running out of cash to operate with (with Bitwala/NURI being the latest casualty).

[SirLancelot]

That is true, the news is a week old now as I read it from this source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-to-be-used-in-fiat-transfers-between-eu-and-africa

This is one of the benefit of bitcoin in which fiat would be converted to bitcoin as someone send the fiat to another person in another country which would be converted to the fiat of the country it is sent to. That is a very good idea and it shows how bitcoin development has helped in this world more than expect.

Blockchain helped in several fields, now it is lightning network.

Thanks for confirming this, mate. Other than we can save a lot of fees, I am also thinking that this is a great way to force someone to use a bitcoin because they expect you will only send them money in their own local currencies but they didn't know that it will be automatically converted into bitcoins.

We should only contact them and educate them further on how they can convert this btc if ever they want to but it will be better if they keep a portion of it, into a wallet that they fully control. I just hope that more currencies are going to be supported by this app and then more cryptos as well, not just bitcoin but it's great that they highlighted the lightning network first. This should help it to become popular again.

[franky1]

This is not how bitcoin is supposed to be used though which is through centralized third party services with a lot of intermediary fees! The correct way would have been to earn bitcoin directly and send it themselves without needing a middle man.

This is true but we can also see it this way, that bitcoin technology makes fiat transaction to be low for cross border payment,

Maybe for small fiat amounts but for larger amounts I don't think it is actually cheap because of all the intermediary fees.

your right

imagine there were 4 CEX
EU , UK ,NGN, KES

the most efficient method of swaps is

the image above is not LN. its just back office reserve swaps so fees are negligible if anything no matter the value. but emphasis this is not LN

however in LN at the most efficient swap, (i limited it to avoid hours of channel making doodles)

but this runs into issues

liquidity availabe if channels have already processed $x amount the night before

and also
not all channels will have equal balance. even if not used before

and also
not all channels have equal fee's

it requires several hops along a route which even in a 4 hop network is a 4x of fee per channel

ill leave you all to play out scenarios on that

(by the way most LN nodes dont have $2k channel balance)

oh last thing

many LIGHTNING devs are playing with a system of using $stable coins as the backed unit of mCENTS on LN thus no need for a fiat-btc-msat double conversion on the entry nor a msat-btc-fiat double conversion on the exit

they instead deposit fiat and use stable coin in LN