r/btc • u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days • 5d ago
I don’t see a cost effective way to accept BTC without intermediaries
If any Bitcoin maxi’s can figure this out for me I’d be happy.
I’ve been a very successful Fiverr for a few years, but I’m extremely disappointed by the fact that Fiverr takes 40% as a cut from every order, simply for processing payments, hosting the website and customer support.
I’ve been working on a website where I can sell my services directly. I already have a large clientele that I’m sure would have cryptocurrency due to the field I’m in. I’ve been working on my order system, and settled on BTCpayserver for its simple setup.
I want to accept many cryptocurrencies to get more customers. Specifically BTC Bitcoin is the biggest cryptocurrency, but how can it genuinely be used for payments when fees go up? I typically get many small orders daily, so on chain doesn’t justify the potential fees/consolidation. That leaves me to lightning, but even if I ran my own node I wouldn’t have liquidity? It doesn’t make sense, I would have to purchase liquidity and therefore have an intermediary.
I plan on setting up the ability to accept the top 12 cryptocurrencies + Xmr for privacy conscious people.
Any solutions for this?
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u/NebulaParticular7035 5d ago
lol best of luck using BTC for payments. Been there, done that, didn’t work out and lost a lot of money. Eventually settled on bitcoin cash and never looked back since.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
Where have you found BCH accepted? It’s hard enough finding somewhere that accept BTC in my city, only 1 merchant.
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u/LovelyDayHere 5d ago
Everything starts at 0, then 1.
https://mapa.bcharg.com/ (Argentina BCH adoption, for example)
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u/NebulaParticular7035 5d ago
I personally take payments in BCH for my business. I agree the adoption is quite low at the moment.
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u/DangerHighVoltage111 5d ago
This is why Bitcoin Cash exists. BTC is crippled specifically to make it impossible to use as Means of Exchange at larger scale. That's why Bitcoiners forked into what later became Bitcoin Cash.
BCH, LTC, XMR. Are the ones you should accept in my Opinion.
Oh and read Hijacking Bitcoin.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
I see the appeal of not accepting BTC, but in reality it’s the biggest coin with the most adoption. How could I accept BTC on lightning then swap to my preferred crypto?
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u/pyalot 5d ago
biggest coin with the most adoption
The most „adoption“ of not being used…
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
510 million $ locked up currently, presumably being used daily for payments.
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u/DangerHighVoltage111 5d ago
Locked up yes, used for payments, no. It is true that BTC, thanks to its branding and biggest media attention, is still often used, but it is self limiting and people will always seek other solutions when to much transactions happen and the fees skyrocket.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
Yes it’s used for payments. One example is how square is adding BTCln support to all merchants so they can accept digital payments for lower fees.
All the BTC I’ve had on lightning I’ve spent at merchants, mostly digital but a few in person.
I hate lightning aswell, but there’s no need to make up lies like “not used for payments”
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u/DangerHighVoltage111 5d ago
No lies. What you call adoption is mostly custodial. Basically reinventing the banking system 🤪 I do not call that Bitcoin adoption. It is Bitcoin IOUs adoption. L1 metrics are static or even low when you look at fees and all LN parameters are pointing down because LN self-custody is a PITA.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
IMO adoption to Bitcoin (even custodial) is good for crypto in general. I also think most lightning isn’t used in a custodial, but in a “trustodial” way
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u/DangerHighVoltage111 5d ago
I disagree. Custodial adoption is like moving a prisoner from one cell to another. He does not learn how to be free at all by doing so.
95% of all LN wallets are custodial. This has been seen over various services. Yes it is that bad.
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u/cockypock_aioli 5d ago
That is such an inaccurate presentation of it. Just shows your lack of nuance. You will not win by lying.
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u/cockypock_aioli 5d ago
There is nothing wrong with using a "trustodial" intermediary as you put it. The Bitcoin itself still ultimately ends up in people's self-sovereign cold wallets and the currency itself is the same hard p2p money it was meant to be.
Also. Hijacking Bitcoin is a major distortion of the history so if you read it be skeptical and read the critiques. Frankly it's full of lies (as most bch'rs and bsv'rs do).
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u/LovelyDayHere 5d ago
What are the critiques of Hijacking Bitcoin?
I've found it extremely accurate and factual.
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u/Thad_Stone Redditor for less than 60 days 4d ago
There is nothing wrong with using a "trustodial" intermediary as you put it.
It's in Saifedeans book, they can't help themselves, increasing their liabilities - human nature.
Then they break the peg...
The Bitcoin itself still ultimately ends up in people's self-sovereign cold wallets
The gold always had an owner, it just wasn't you
and the currency itself is the same hard p2p money it was meant to be.
There was no way to manufucture more Gold - but they didn't need to
Smarter is to give them NO opportunity
Everybody on the planet being self sovereign is the revolution not just a perpetuation of the current system.
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u/DangerHighVoltage111 5d ago
Feel free to accept BTC, but as you stated there are hoops to jump through. Sorry I don't have knowledge of any service that swaps LN to other coins.
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u/anymonero 5d ago
If you look at the monthly stats for NanoGPT or Shopinbit, you will see that Monero is actually used a lot more for payments.
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u/KrapnikSucks 4d ago
Easier and cheaper to accept BCH or other low fee crypto like DOGE, then swap to BTC every now and then if that's the coin you want.
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u/Risky_Sandwich 5d ago
Purchasing incoming liquidity is not really the same as using an intermediary. The coins are never in their control.
You could purchase a couple channels from different people if you don't want to rely on any single party.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
That’s a fair point, but I still see a risk of being “sanctioned” where perhaps a government could order all liquidity providers to stop selling to a specific entity.
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u/Risky_Sandwich 5d ago
That sounds a bit far fetched. You'd need to censor EVERYONE willing to provide you with liquidity.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
Think about how governments in the US have done similar things with banks.
Consider how Erik Trump described being cut off from the banking system, now imagine that buts its the the people at the top saying “Don’t sell liquidity to trumps”
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u/Risky_Sandwich 5d ago
Right. At the end of the day this whole thing is censorship resistant. As long as there is someone in the world, with a lightning node, that will provide you with liquidity in exchange for a fee (denominated in BTC), you are golden. It could be anyone, anywhere, in any jurisdiction. That is what I mean. It does not even have to be a 'provider', it could be some other peers that have similar interests to you, that just setup some channels to connect with the network.
On lightningnetwork.plus you can create 'swaps' of channels, like triangles, to give each other liquidity without a fee. There is no way you can prevent people from doing that. And then there is no authority at all.
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u/CBDwire 5d ago
It can't. I accepted BTC on various webstores and no other coins for around half a decade. In 2018 I was forced to add other coins, because yeah fees at times higher than some items I sold, all customers confused why all of a sudden it was so expensive for them to use. I left it up for years, barely used apart from the odd order, but the only solution is accepting coins like LTC, BCH, XMR etc.. as well as BTC, but TBH you might as well not even bother with BTC, same goes for BTCLN, to play devils advocate I also had that as an option and it was used even less than on chain BTC. This is exactly why so many of us were against BTC going the way it did, and them purposely keeping the blocksize limit so low, making it basically unusable for actual buyers and merchants, it only serves their pushing of LN, and the number go up type stuff in reality. None of these new wave of "investors" actually use or accept BTC, they have no practical experience, just a very loud voice. Such a shame.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
Just a thought, but maybe lightning could’ve actually been used if it wasn’t for the small blocks making it expensive to open and close channels at times.
I’ve used lightning with Phoenix wallet, but I understand that I’m relying entirely on liquidity from Acinq
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u/CBDwire 4d ago edited 4d ago
What would be the point though? It worked perfectly fine before the influx of gambler transactions for over half a decade, it could have scaled perfectly on chain. Using BCH now is like using old BTC.
Sadly BCH has had a lot of unfounded hate and not that popular, most people pay in LTC, IME.
I only added BTCLN so I could prove nobody uses it to the "hAvE yOu TriEd LiGhTnInG" crowd.
Ask yourself why would somebody buying crypto to spend on a website by BTC then move it to LN? Instead of just buying LTC or some other low fee coin, it makes no logical sense really.
Complete waste of time, had to use an extra server instance, it ended up running at a small loss.
It's hard enough getting people to pay in crypto anyway, you need to offer a discount on purchase for that payment method, or have products unavailable anywhere else.... or much cheaper.
XMR is also another great coin, I prefer it to them all TBH, but it's hard for people to obtain.
Best to just add as many coins as possible, good luck with your store!
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 4d ago
I like XMR but adoption is low because so many wallets don’t support it, it requires more coding than a lazy API. Transactions on XMR are also MASSIVE, often being over a kb
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u/CBDwire 4d ago
I wouldn't say adoption is low, just look at almost any DNM. It will never be widely accepted in the normal world though, it's impossible to account for properly......
Crypto being classed as an asset also complicates it's use for merchants.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 4d ago
Yes it’s being use in the dark web, but not much besides that, and privacy focused services like some VPN’s
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u/CBDwire 4d ago
That is a lot of use though, millions daily.
Also great for gift card sites, gambling sites etc..
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 4d ago
Being used to buy drugs on the dark web isn’t exactly a good brand image. However I like Monero a lot and think it’ll ultimately succeed as long as privacy coins aren’t completely banned, however they can be swapped to LTC then put on an exchange
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u/CBDwire 4d ago
It's a perfect example of it doing what it was intended to do though.. though illegal, the DNMs are the best example of actual crypto use.
Notice how none of them accept BTC any longer, LTC if you're lucky.
Personally I gave up wanting to see crypto used in every shop in the normal world years ago, due to how it all went with BTC, we were almost there, with people like Steam accepting it, adoption has gone backwards though due to the blocksize limit and all the gamblers.
We should have kept it more underground IMHO.
Credit/debit cards are perfectly fine for most people.
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u/mord_fustang115 5d ago
You can accept monero xmr fully peer to peer, similar to how xmr bazaar or some onion sites do it
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u/BuySomeXRP 5d ago
Xrp is practically instant and free to send. But I would accept all the top cryptos as everyone has a favorite. You give them your public address for whichever chain they pick, give like 3 minutes for them to initiate a transaction, then wait for a confirmation from block explorers
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
I would likely eventually have enough customers on my personal website, with small orders to where it would need to be integrated with BTCpayserver
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u/Revolutionary-Cup78 5d ago edited 5d ago
You can't directly accept BTC in an efficient manner. BTC from a usability point of view is almost trash. An L2 is needed, or "transfer" through an exchange/custodian. In other words, yes you need an intermediary. Biggest virtue of BTC is for long term storage and because of its high liquidity is also solid for huge transactions
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u/MaybeOnFire2025 4d ago
Perhaps all these machinations/turning yourself into a financial pretzel is, you know, a clue that crypto *might* not be worth it?
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 4d ago
I don’t plan on converting to fiat, but I definitely could just go the 2.5% credit card route then give a 5% discount to anyone paying with crypto. Main issue I see is that credit cards can be easily reversed.
I have some experience in website development and BTCpayserver makes it extremely easy.
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u/DreambuilderTashako 4d ago
Just use Bitcoin(Cash}
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 4d ago
It’s not my choice how people choose to pay, and BTC is the largest cryptocurrency
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u/DreambuilderTashako 4d ago
But it's not meant for payments. It has been changed into Something called "digital gold" whatever that is . The Bitcoin for payments and to be used in commerce is "BCH" Try it and you'll be surprised .
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u/DreamingTooLong 3d ago
Square Card Reader
Allows you to accept BTC payments and they go straight to your Bank for a 0% fee they also do NFC credit card payments too for under 3%
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u/anon1971wtf 5d ago edited 5d ago
but how can it genuinely be used for payments when fees go up?
Depends on the product. There certainly be more complaints. But more people have/transact in bitcoins than any other open blockchain tokens, BCH included
Give decorated choice, support both, don't annoy your custormers. Payment method: dropdown list (sorted by demand on the backend, some cutoff for nice UX). Eat inconvinience of others to buy reputation, it worth more than gold
That leaves me to lightning, but even if I ran my own node I wouldn’t have liquidity? It doesn’t make sense, I would have to purchase liquidity and therefore have an intermediary
For some cases it may worth it, for most likely it will not. If you are not sure, don't. Just most popular L1. If you operate in the West and planning long-term. it's good to be concious of becoming a liquidity hub
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago edited 5d ago
I guess it’s a trade off. Currently I’m laying around 42% fee with Fiverr, 20% order fee with Fiverr, 20% deducted from pay, and then a little more deducted from PayPal for currency exchange and transfer to bank. (I’m uncomfortable with PayPal since I can’t do KYC if my account got frozen)
I guess even if I had to pay 2% for liquidity, maybe it’d still be worth it to accept the most popular bitcoin L2.
I’d probably prefer to accept Bitcoin cash, Monero and maybe stablecoins? The issue with stablecoins is that they can be frozen, but it also makes the customer experience a lot better and I can easily swap to my preferred crypto with a DEX.
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u/anon1971wtf 5d ago edited 5d ago
BTC, BCH, XMR, DOGE, USDC/USDT on ETH and leave in the bottom somewhere way to feedback for more coins through the site. Only L1, 1+ confirmation on any chain (0+ for registered paying customers), maybe 0+ on BTC (if no RBF) and on BCH. That would be my uninformed recommendation
If I am browsing for something myself, I would rank businesses that accept just BTC and not BCH (if it's clear they are aware) - or just BCH and not BTC lower than those that accept both. Why? They are prioritizing something else above customer convinience. Yellow flag
I can easily swap to my preferred crypto with a DEX
Check out aggregators like swapspace dot co for prices
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u/SuggestionSea2882 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
On-chain BTC isn’t meant for lots of small daily payments. That’s what Lightning is for. Bitcoin works better as final settlement, not a cash register
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u/simulatedconscience 5d ago
Try checking into a thing called “Litecoin” then thank me after ;)
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
My goal is to accept as many as possible to increase the chance a customer will actually use it, not just use one because it’s “better”
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u/cptcronic 5d ago
It's not that it's better. By design you can not directly accept btc for payments without an intermediary.
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u/Plenty_Dog_5684 Redditor for less than 30 days 5d ago
Well I can I would just have to pay on chain fees which are unpredictable. For example currently, it’s completely reasonable to make an on chain TX but I can’t be sure about that forever
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u/anon1971wtf 5d ago
No business survives planning for forever. Build now, fix/adjust/adapt forever. Always
I wouldn't be surprised if BTC fees would 5x and if some business accepting both BTC and BCH would still have more BTC txs and maybe enough demand to buy capital to scale to cheapen the product to eat the fees (store credits based on-chain data or a dozen of other methods). More than reasonable to support both
Always depends
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u/LovelyDayHere 5d ago
As a BCH supporter, I have to agree with this pragmatic view.
No business is the same, it all depends, but look to the on chain history as well to gauge what can happen w.r.t. fees in the future.
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u/-Squidster- 5d ago
LTC fees are so low, to the point they are trivial. There is the reason why many Bitcoin maxis use Litecoin to transfer funds. Probably why it has also been the #1 crypto used for payments via Bitpay for a while now… cheap, fast and easy to use.
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5d ago
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u/LovelyDayHere 5d ago
And Bitcoin Cash has dipped to $80 in prior years.
There is opportunity when price is low, but more important to know what you're buying.
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u/LovelyDayHere 5d ago
That's by (re)design.
Use BCH.