you can spend your cash balance over Lightning today on Strike. I prefer this over spend and replace because it avoids the capital gain taxable event and is the same thing as spend and replace. what we do behind the scenes is take your fiat, convert it to bitcoin, and pay the lightning invoice. what’s mind blowing is that when Square turns this on, a consumer and a merchant can even do USD <> USD settlement with bitcoin as the network, not Visa. cheaper, faster , cash final, etc. View quoted note →

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Top notch feature that is probably buried in the UX too far now with all the updates since, and not top of mind for new users.
People just probably don’t think to “send” cash and then click the “to bitcoin wallet”
See here:
MT⚡️'s avatar MT⚡️
For payments specifically? That’ll be generally available on Nov. 10 but here’s what to expect: Go into Payment Settings in the Square app and you’ll see a new row for Bitcoin with an Activate button next to it. We do a bunch of eligibility checks so activation will be quicker for some than others (depending on your business structure, geolocation, 2FA status, etc) But everyone will have the option to choose USD or bitcoin settlement, and another surprise feature we’ll have at launch 👀 We’re looking into ways to auto-on bitcoin payments with USD settlement but as you can imagine it’s challenging from a legal and regulatory perspective. Separately you can enable payments from Bitcoin onboarding (in Square Banking) where you can also configure your card sale conversions and set up your wallet.
View quoted note →
And here:
MT⚡️'s avatar MT⚡️
That’s secondary to it. I won’t bore you with the details but because bitcoin is so regulated (with nuances at the state level in some cases), auto-on even as USD is extremely tricky. We’re working to unlock this as much as possible but it requires taking a very methodical approach that focuses on specific segments at a time.
View quoted note →
John's avatar
John 2 months ago
Only applies if you hold dollars Just go 100% - to quote mallers - "its a capital GAIN it means you didnt get debased"
John's avatar
John 2 months ago
Oh I misunderstood the situation nvm
People don’t seem to understand how valuable the network of bitcoin is. Asset price aside, the network is worth trillions.
I just did a test sending $1 from strike cash balance and received 912 Sats in cash app, using lightning address.
@MT⚡️, what would help the onboarding the most? It sounds like the square integration will be opt-in from the beginning and so probably not many sellers are going to do it initially. Do you want bitcoiners to ask the sellers about adding bitcoin? Can the person selling in the shop enable it, or do we need to get in touch with the owner? (I'm thinking coffee shops and similar)
Primate's avatar
Primate 2 months ago
How “is [it] the same thing as spend and replace.”? Do you mean theoretically because you could have bought and spent BTC? That’s an awfully metaphysical way to support the network. While I do see the benefits to strike since it habituates users to alternative spending desire lines, i don’t see how it supports the hodl ethos beyond using BTC as rails to disintermediate visa. Which is not nothing but it’s not sovereign individual behavior per se.
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Primate 2 months ago
I see, so strike is doing the latter on LN avoiding taxation? But calling it US dollar transactions because that’s what merchants get? So is this BTC on USD rails or USD on LN rails? Gets into the taxable-ness of market ontology. Interesting.
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Primate 2 months ago
Yeah, it’s a kind of a private (strike) and public BTC/LN network subsidy for hard money end users. The government could regulate away this arbitrage by redefining taxable events, I guess, also. Or maybe strike never actually touches the dollar settlement layer (IRS and state purviews) and so the LN networked dollars are only theoretically taxable. Need a graphic for how strike does this to be able to ask better questions.
You’ll need to get in touch with the owner. It’s a sensitive process from a legal/compliance/regulatory pov. But once they decide to turn it on it only takes a minute. I would lead with the basics: 1. Zero processing fees until 2027 2. Never miss a sale. An emergent way for customers to pay 3. Instant, no chargebacks, and can be settled in USD so its business as usual 4. They can order a free marketing kit from the Square shop and update their window stickers and table tents
>what’s mind blowing is that when Square turns this on, a consumer and a merchant can even do USD <> USD settlement with bitcoin as the network In other words you reinvent PayPal... The whole point of Bitcoin is to fuck fiat, not using it. You are just perpetuating an evil system to exist. image