cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/24975827
Do you think a corporation would do anything to get an extra 1% return on their next quarterly report? Would they do things that hurt them in the long-term just so this quarter looked good? Make their products worse for a quick buck? Fuck over their long-term employees they spent years training? Skimp on quality and safety? Yes. They absolutely would. Corporations pay 3-5% on credit card fees and wait weeks for settlement. Lightning is <1% and it's instant. It's that simple. That's why Bitcoin lightning is going to win in the long run.
It's the same reason the food cart down the street takes venmo: because, at one time, venmo was free, which made it cheaper than credit cards. It's not free now though, because it couldn't be sustainably free, because nothing is free, and because venmo has every incentive to suck every dollar of profit out of those transactions it can. They have a captive audience. Lightning doesn't work that way. Liquidity providers, nodes, etc they all have to compete for your payment, so over time, fees get lower, not higher. Venmo isn't growing in adoption any more among merchants, lightning is.
The savings on fees is so significant that merchants can offer a discount to customers equivalent to the customer's normal credit card cash back and the merchant can still save money compared to credit cards. Last time Bitcoin got real hyped and lots of merchant adoption, fees and transaction confirmation times became a limiting factor. That factor is gone now. Cash App, in the US, has 25% market penetration. That's a lightning wallet. When customers realize they can get a 3% discount everywhere just by using it? Game over for credit cards.
If you haven't tried lightning, it's awesome. Instant confirmation, fees <1%, and very decentralized. There were some growing pains, but it's pretty robust now, I use it on a daily basis. It's where the majority of Bitcoin transactions occur, and nostr users alone are using it to send millions of transactions a month.
