Thread by @pickingunicorns

1/x

A few tweets about the significance of P2P payments in #cryptocurrency and why interoperability with traditional financial rails is key to reach mass adoption.

In the early days, the #bitcoin narrative evolved around P2P payments. We needed a digital equivalent of cash.
This was inspired by the role of banks in the 2008 financial crisis.

IF #BTC would become the currency of the internet, as a result it should be valuable.

Since then, this has changed into a #HODL and #BTC = #Gold narrative. Scarcity brings value.

Where in the early days people wanted to spend #BTC, this has become quite rare. Why is that? There are a couple of reasons.

The more obvious reasons are:

1. Spending #BTC P2P has become expensive.
2. Spending #BTC P2P is slow.

There is another reason that makes it hard to spend #Bitcoin though:

The lack of interoperability.

EVEN if I want to pay significant fees and wait a while to pay for my coffee, I still need to find someone that wants to sell coffee in exchange for my #BTC.

This is a big hurdle for mass adoption. The good news is that it can be solved.

The solution would allow you spend X, while the other person receives Y.

This way you can spend digital cash (like #Bitcoin), even if the other party wants something else (say $USD).

Let's look at how #Stellar solves this.

#Stellar is an open protocol for payments and has a native currency ($XLM) that function as digital cash, like #Bitcoin.

In addition, the protocol allows financial institutions to tokenize traditional assets like $USD on the same network.

All of these assets are interoperable

This means that you can save AND spend the digital cash #XLM, while someone else receives $USD in the bank. This means you no longer need to convince someone to receive $XLM in order to spend it.

Mass adoption made easy.

For this to become reality, enough of these traditional assets need to be tokenized on that same network. Last week $USDC launched on #Stellar, bringing a new endpoint onto the network.

The coming years i'm convinced we'll see many more go live, making adoption ever more easy.

Next to solving the interoperability problem, #Stellar is also fast and cheap. Settlement happens in 3-5 sec., and fees are less than a fraction of a penny.

Thanks to interoperability you can easily decide what amount of #XLM you want to save (#HODL), while still spending it.

My hope is that the #Cryptocurrency community will shift back towards a spending culture in the coming years.

What got me most excited about #Bitcoin and #Blockchain is the fact that you spend a digitial cash equivalent without the use of third parties.

Let's #SPEDN!