1933 was the last time that a U.S. citizen could walk into a bank and redeem gold for their dollars. At the time, given the average hourly wage of $0.47 and the pegged gold price of $20.67 per ounce, an ounce of gold represented about 44 hours of labor. Today, with an hourly wage of $36.30 and a gold price of $3,400 per ounce, that same ounce represents about 94 hours of labor. More than a 2x drop. If that ounce represented the same 44 hours it used to, the average hourly wage would be $77.55. That’s be a six figure annual income with 25 hours of work per week and two weeks off per year. We have no idea what we’ve lost, my friends.
Talked to a friend the other day who runs a small business. He's not a bitcoiner but I've talked to him about it here and there. He mentioned how much they have to pay in credit card fees, so naturally I brought up the ability to circumvent that using lightning. I showed him Zaprite and he seemed genuinely interested. At $25 per month for a Zaprite subscription, and assuming that you save 2% in fees and pass half of that savings back to the customer (i.e. you save 1%), you'd need to get $2,500 per month paid in Bitcoin. The conversation ended with "this doesn't quite make financial sense... yet" but I don't think it'll be long until it becomes a no-brainer for most small businesses, even if neither the business nor the customers care about Bitcoin.