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Comment by poopsmithe | Hacker News Reader

I'm calling it-- 5 years and this will be vaporware. We live in a world where you have to 1) compete with VISA, Mastercard and 2) compete with Bitcoin Lightning Network.

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You don't have to wait that long, they shut down. "We realized that we were back at square one, and with our product so far ahead of our sales, decided to pivot away from payments entirely."

https://zenobiapay.com/blog/open-source-payments

I was an early adopter of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. If my memory serves correctly, I made one (real) payment with it. That was almost 10 years ago now, and I haven't even seen the chance to use it since.

Mostly because it is still innovated upon. Async payments (offline receival) and trampoline payments are in the pipeline, allowing true self-custodial wallets on the smartphone.

That aside, I only use lightning with my Bitcoin-friends to settle stuff for fun. I live in a city of 300k people, and there are 3 restaurants that accept Lightning payments. Right now it is in its infancy, but I see Lightning as the only solution to actually enable web micro-payments (which failed as a standard because no credit card can provide .10 to .20 cent payments due to high fees)

I would bet more transactions are done in exchange for literal home-grown vegetables this month than over Bitcoin Lightning Network, yet no one claims a payment method needs to compete with bartered vegetables.

It helps to get clued into what happened with stablecoin legalization and interest this year. Without this awareness one risks looking very foolish.

Considering they are closing shop, I don't think you need to wait 5 years. Did you even read the article? They say it in the opening of the second paragraph...

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