Hello world!

This is my first note on nostr 🙂

It has been popular to compare Btc txs to cross border bank txs and conclude that Bitcoin is faster.

It has also been popular to compare lightning-network txs to credit card txs

and conclude that those two are about equally fast.

However since a Bitcoin transaction is actually changing custody of something scarce, I think it's more appropriate to compare Bitcoin txs to physical gold/money transports.

And since you need your lightning node to be online, and only transfer "kind of" IOUs (unsettled txs), I think it's fair to compare lightning nodes to banks, and compare lightning txs to bank transfers.

So what is then the Bitcoin equivalent of credit card txs?

Well, cutting corners by letting others handle liquidity/transfer for you.

We see this with nostr when sending zaps where people, as of now, mostly use Wallet of Satoshi.

Also federated services like Blockstream's Liquid network and Fedi's ecash system optimize transfer speed and fee costs.

These services are still so new that I'd argue we can't really make proper comparisons to the credit card systems just yet.

In other words Bitcoin txs will become much faster and cheaper in the future.

We are (even now) still early!