Bitcoin is about to change the game again, and some folks are missing it.

This is going to be long, so apologies in advance.. after I write it I will attempt a TLDR.

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attempted TLDR: Strike news is huge, like really huge. they are using Lightning Network to transfer dollars between two parties at a fee rate that is way cheaper than Visa and MC and when they find a customer base, the BTC super-cycle is here (not predicting this part super soon, few years away). Best part is that it doesn't require hodlers to spend their BTC.. or merchants to accept a volatile asset as payment.

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Pretty much everyone has seen the news about Strike partnering with major payment processors so that WalMart, McDonalds, Lowe's, Home Depot, and many other major retailers will be able accept payments over the lightning network. This (in and of itself) would not be that big... as we all know, there are many reasons that people don't want to spend their BTC, and Merchants don't want to receive BTC. What is huge about the Strike announcement is that NEITHER of these things have to happen.

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The existing process through both credit and debit cards works like this... you swipe your card, the merchant forwards a charge request to their merchant processor. The processor reviews and approves of the transaction so they send it to the association (Visa or Mastercard), the association reviews and approves the transaction request and sends it on to the customer's bank. The customer's bank reviews and approves the transaction (confirming things like you have money in your account, the charge doesn't look suspicious, etc.). The transaction message receives it's final approval and gets sent back to the association, that sends it back to the merchant bank, that sends it back to the merchant and you walk out the door with your stuff. Every party along this path takes a cut of the transaction, on average, about 3% of the transaction amount was used to pay for the payment infrastructure. After the approval is received, the merchant will not have the money in their hands for a few days (timeframes on this can vary quite a bit) and for up to 60 or so days the charge may be called back if the customer either reports that they didn't make the charge (fraud) or that the services / goods were not as promised (chargebacks / disputes).

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What Strike is doing is this... when you select to send a payment of $100 using this method, you buy BTC that is already on the LN from Strike sends the BTC you just acquired through a lightening channel to the endpoint (it takes about a second) where the BTC is immediately sold by the receiving merchant (or person) for cash. That's it. No banks to pay, no Associations to pay. and more importantly... Strike is ALREADY doing this at a fee rate of 0.2% for peer to peer transfers, up till now they have been focused on remittances to El Salvador. let that sink in.. right now, Strike is transferring U.S. Dollar amounts from from U.S. person to El Salvador person at a cheaper rate than you using visa at your grocery store. Companies like Square, CashApp, Venmo, and others will immediately be able to build the same system that Strike is creating, there is nothing proprietary in it.. if just requires the processor to be able to acquire and sell BTC at a low rate and fund lightening channels.

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Now... what does this mean for price. First off... let me be clear, I don't see any way this driving an immediate price pump, but what this does do is this... since the buyers and sellers utilizing this system will be completely price insensitive (to them, it doesn't matter "how much BTC is $10 worth at the time of sale" it only matters how much you can expect the price to change during the 1 second it is transiting the lightening network. say... $10B in daily retail purchasing volume moves to this new cheaper settlement layer, that means... every day there is a guarantee of $10B dollars of buys and sells AT ANY PRICE. if adoption grows beyond that (say merchants offering a discount using this payment method since it is cheaper for them and has faster settlement with fewer risks) then there become very large pools of USD guaranteed to enter and exit BTC positions every day, making BTC the capital that underlies and guarantees the value transfers of all retail using this payment method.

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some additional points.

1.)many people believe "they are getting 3% back" with their credit card. they are not.. you are not getting paid to use your card, you are getting back some of the fees collected by banks supporting the card. That being said.. people believe they are getting paid to use their card, and convincing them to switch will be the hardest part.

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2.)Most card purchasing in the US is on debit cards not credit cards. AFAIK... nobody gets money back on debit cards, most people have to pay checking account fees to have a debit card.

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3.)To those who think a 3% fee isn't alot, it's important to think about it this way... merchants profit margins on goods are usually numbers like 6%, that means they make $6 out of a $100 sale... turning that $6 profit to $9 by losing the 3% fee is a 50% increase to their net profit - that is how merchants are going to think about this.

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4.)This payment process is so much better for merchants, they are likely to incentive customers to use it by offering discounts or something. "being certain" that the payment is done after it is over (no chargeback risks) and not having to wait days to weeks to get the money means they may just pass the whole 3% in savings for people using this method.