Today I paid my groceries thanks to Bitcoin Lightning Network even if in my country BTC is not a payment method yet.

A little bit of context:

1. I didn't pay with Bitcoin directly. My country still doesn't accept it for payments in most common places.
2. Coinbase, Binance and other exchanges doesn't allow me to withdraw directly to my bank, no friendly Exchange cards available like in US, only P2P and usually is not always the best safe option since you have to reveal your identity to random person. Also my BTC is in my non-custodial wallets.
3. I run my own Umbrel node and I have a Zap Lightning hot wallet via Tor. I also got my cold wallet to store bigger amounts.

I'm in BTC since a while ago, I tried to maintain a low profile, just stacking it and testing things like the Lightning Network, no intentions of using it for anything else, since my country is still in early stages trying to understand it.

Today, I want to share something because it was an exception to my view on Bitcoin. I was with my family going to pay my groceries with my Vale card, about 100 USD, here some companies have something called "Vale" which is like a debit card just for food, medical stuff, tuition, groceries, etc. After trying to pay the Vale card was declined 3 times because system was unavailable. I started to panic since my other Visa debit card only had about 30 USD and I didn't want to return all groceries and the cashier was already waiting for me to pay.

After about a minute more thinking what to do, I run short of options, all my fiat money is in another bank closed hours ago, and an ACH transaction here in my country takes about a day to move from a bank to another. Then I remember I had my Lightning Wallet and I proceed to use an exchange to convert my BTC in my Lightning wallet to USD in my Visa debit card to pay all in less than a minute. My family was suprised, my "magic internet money" paid for things and we got all happy, my sister even told me to buy back the BTC later because she understood what I did and that BTC indeed has value.

My flow was like this: BTC Ligthning Node -> BUSD CEX -> USD Visa debit card

TLDR: Run out of fiat to pay for groceries, cashier was waiting for me to pay in front of my family. ACH transaction takes about a day in my country. Thanks to my BTC Lightning Wallet I exchanged BTC to USD and got it to my debit card to pay, all in less than a minute.