I'm an early adopter of bitcoin, jumping in when I saw the original Slashdot post, so I've been following it and using it for a long time.
The flaws with using bitcoin as a currency today are:
1) It has a delay. When you send money it could take them literally over an hour to get that money. (Usually within 5 minutes though.) This is not ideal for a business. There are bitcoin services that smooth this over, giving them cash immediately, and automatically transferring it to USD so the company never touches a bitcoin. To the business it's basically a credit card.
2) Transfer fees. While not the end of the world in the early days, they're worse than credit cards today. Expect to pay a lot to buy a latte, almost 1.5x due to fees.
The bitcoin community for a while has been strongly pushing for BCH or Bitcoin Cash. It addresses these two issues, reducing fees significantly and accelerating transfer. It's the alt currency the bitcoin community has been pushing. However, I admit I have zero experience using it to buy items.
My understanding is that the entire goal of the LN project was to alleviate these by taking individual transactions off-chain by setting up collateral upfront. Was it not successful?
My understanding is that the entire goal of the LN project was to alleviate these by taking individual transactions off-chain by setting up collateral upfront. Was it not successful?
The flaws with using bitcoin as a currency today are:
1) It has a delay. When you send money it could take them literally over an hour to get that money. (Usually within 5 minutes though.) This is not ideal for a business. There are bitcoin services that smooth this over, giving them cash immediately, and automatically transferring it to USD so the company never touches a bitcoin. To the business it's basically a credit card.
2) Transfer fees. While not the end of the world in the early days, they're worse than credit cards today. Expect to pay a lot to buy a latte, almost 1.5x due to fees.
The bitcoin community for a while has been strongly pushing for BCH or Bitcoin Cash. It addresses these two issues, reducing fees significantly and accelerating transfer. It's the alt currency the bitcoin community has been pushing. However, I admit I have zero experience using it to buy items.