If we want to grow nostr beyond bitcoiners, relays are going to have to accept fiat.
Discussion
Nah
Agreed. It’s easy enough to support payment options.
Stupid idea: Accept fiat, but it is directly converted to sats?
The way I wished Strike worked, was horrified it went the other way. WTF. 😂
i think we can try harder. make it easier for new users to have a wallet installed, give some free sats, include country options and p2p options of sats conversion - and when trade is involved, include usd, usdc, bric, euro conversion to bitcoin. i think having millions of people with wallets and some sats is going to create more excitement in implementing bitcoin on regular commodity and purchases and normalise it globally. maybe a 80-20 later on for exchange purposes
I absolutely agree with you it difficult to buy or put some sats in your wallet
I'm not sure that nostr is a strong enough lever to use it to lever people into bitcoin. I think it will just snap off. If people have to be bothered with the new concepts of nostr AND the new concepts of bitcoin, new terms like sats and zaps and wallets, I think a lot of normies will find it all too much.
I personally find it easy. And it seems like some new people like nostr:npub1drkv6h6k47s3fc40f0h884m6qr256kvrqvhc0p6wtrg9ywp9tt5qf3tgev find it fun and hop right in. And it can be built-in and made as easy as possible if we get the clients right.
But there will be people who say "Bitcoin, oh no. That's why my computer got cryptolockered. Fuck them." and other people who will feel like criminals for associating with bitcoiners ("why don't they just use money? clearly they are buying and selling illegal things"). Or even "this is going to complicate my taxes beyond what I'm willing to bear."
I think it helps to define target markets and work around that. One example was iPhone and narrowing smart phone adoption to working class execs globally as the cool thing to have as they would be the easiest to adopt. Then the sales team hit local distribution and created global adoption.
If your target market is Cassie then it’s best to understand the region, age group, purchasing power, her commodity use cases etc and build around that. It’s gonna start small before it grows big and erupts.
This is a simplified diagram, one very old book called crossing the chasm by Geoffrey Moore - the early stage to mainstream is gonna be hard. Most startups fail here and mostly because lack of funds and market needs. I think Jack might be able give some tips on how they build Twitter early stages and grew it - I think he revived it a couple of times through various strategies during the early years
But working around those target markets and creating use cases for Bitcoin will be a possible way for global adoption
It’s also the much publicised energy fud by the State attacks which make people feel they don’t want to be seen to be a part of something ‘damaging’ the planet
Hey Michael, thanks for mentioning me!
I'm not into crypto, and yes, people do make it a bit scary..
I'm on nostr, and I'm still struggling to find and follow other topics, but it's getting better by the day!
Gave you a follow!💫🫶
Glad you're here and came and said hi. People were memeing about you so I used you as an example. Hope you're cool with that. Yeah, I wasn't into bitcoin when I got involved, I was looking for a Twitter replacement. I'm cool with bitcoin though.
I don't talk about bitcoin (much at all), but I do talk about nostr technology a lot, world politics, and any crazy idea that I think up and want feedback on. Hope that provides you some diversity. 🤙
im like #[2], i dont care about bitcoin, zaps i get i return to people's posts on nostr, its no big deal, but i agree it would be cool if paid relays can use fiat
I 💯💯 agree with you
relays can be configured to accept kyc or non-kyc -> anything digitally
Nah
Bullshit, on the surface that might be true but Nostr is a decentralized freedom tool and accepting fiat payments requires KYC, KYC is by default centralized and can be used to oppress. KYC relays can be required to disclose payment information to repressive states.
In the end relays are free to accept fiat off course but it’s the anti thesis of freedom to me.
I'm all for adoption and I post a bit about my concerns about it - but I would draw the line there.
Admittedly, it is a totally arbitrary line. But I think it's important that we keep Nostr within the BTC ecosystem.
I think relays are going to accept different things at some point. I don’t think that’s conditional to the growth of the protocol as the UX of everything in question is significantly improving. I’ve seen none bitcoiners get very excited with their initial bitcoin experience here.
Nothing good will ever come out of that. Just another centralized, surveiled service in most parts. If masses come, the greed money will follow them for sure and offer them a huge chunk of free storage space on relays because they can, and what we get out of that? We already have that.
We give people the opportunity using their old habits, they will keep using them. It's coded in our human nature.
Yes offer them fiat, but then we should build the rails suatable for fiat transfers with a time.sleep(24*60*60) function
*With fiat, all thar hard work of people trying to build, faster, cheaper value flow, will be obliterated.*
Uncomfortable truth for many here, but truth nonetheless! 🐶🐾🫡
Some will, sure. In the short term.
Agree. When I pay Bitcoin I think about what I expect Bitcoin to do in the next couple of years, and the price seems 10x more expensive. When I pay in fiat I don't worry about that and am had that the price hasn't increased due to inflation.
For example, nostr.wine subscription seems steep at 18000 sats, but I happily pay 3x that for Spotify.
If I could pay for a relay in fiat and a bit extra for some sats to use in zaps I wouldn't hesitate. That would be an ideal Bitcoin onboarder, because people would see first hand how sats are better for micropayments.