1/25 🧵 @bitrefill believes it the largest commerce platform in the space. As such, I wanted to share some deep thoughts on payment method (PM) popularity over time in the hope of pushing the industry forward. This first chart shows monthly active users for each PM since 2019: 2/25 In the chart above:
- Solid colors indicate crypto assets,
- Dotted texture represents stablecoin tokens,
- Backslashes represent layer 2 crypto assets (BTC on Lightning),
- Forward slashes represent layer 2/sidechain stablecoins (USDC on Polygon).

1) In Old City Istanbul I found around a dozen "crypto shops". It's really amazing to see crypto manifest in the real world like this. Here are some of my observations on this trend and I hope that some Turks can chime in and give better context: 2) The price quotes I got held a 5-6% fee for getting USD in hand. That is, selling $100 in BTC got me $94-95 USD. The shop that I did business with did not require my ID, but unsure if this is applied equally across all shops.

1/ The informal Nigeria Naira has lost 23% of its value against USD since the start of the year, a staggering number for Africa's largest currency. On Friday, the CBN pressured @abokifx, the country's largest publisher of informal exchange rates, to suspend publication. 2/ This move is similar to the Venezuela gov's attempt at blocking its own citizens from accessing @DolarToday, a website tracker of the black market rate of the Venezuelan Bolivar, in 2013.

1/ Update on #ChivoWallet app functionality today based on our work @bitrefill:

- Receive lightning works but UX is really bad. You have to click "Recibir", then "BTC", and then click dropdown at the top and click "Otras Billeteras" where "Reciber Bitcoin via Lightning" shows. 2/ Send lightning works with a QR code but pasting in invoice gives an error asking for amt even though it should already know the amt.

Learnings on El Salvador Chivo app functionality so far:

- You can use the original $30 BTC to send off-chain, but you have to send it back and forth in Chivo 3-5 times
- You CAN send #Lightning to Chivo
- You CAN send Lightning FROM Chivo
- on-chain are NOT being batched Native Segwit is being used.

Seems like the airdroppped $30 BTC is not allowed to be sent outside of the "Chivo" system. This is pretty much the same as what the fiat banking system does in many countries preventing users from freely spending their money in the free market.

Very bearish.

https://twitter.com/aveotero/status/1435235216906506256

This will cause black markets to form where people wishing to free their "stuck" money will have to find a counterparty on the street who is willing to accept these "stuck" bitcoins in exchange for bitcoins/USD outside of the system.

1/ Some super interesting #LightningNetwork trends @bitrefill lately...

Emerging markets, not the US or Europe, have been leading the way in lightning adoption.

For example, 92% of all payments coming to us from El Salvador are riding lightning rails this month... 2/ The El Salvador growth is likely due to @Bitcoinbeach and @ln_strike's direct efforts there however, and so we have to concede that the growth has been nurtured along more there.

What's more impressive to me are Brazil and Nigeria's 39% and 33% lightning payment shares...

1/ An absolutely incredible story out of Venezuela today. @theairtm, a @Coinbase funded digital currency exchange, has been elected to redistribute $18M in US government seized corruption funds of the Maduro government back to 62,000 healthcare workers in Venezuela. 2/ @jguaido, leader of the opposition in Venezuela, repeatedly recognized AirTM’s efforts in a press release yesterday and outlined their plans for airdropping censorship-resistant digital dollars onto Venezuelan healthcare workers through their platform.

https://twitter.com/jguaido/status/1296616192145154048?s=20

[1/5] Holy Smokes! Sub-Saharan Africa had its first 10M voume week ever on P2P exchanges, stomping the weekly record set in Dec 2017! The volume is likely a bedrock of utility use with a substantial bump of speculation related to the halvening: [2/5] Ghana, Kenya, and Central Africa hit new volume records this week and Nigeria nearly did:

usefultulips.org/combined_Sub%2…