This Thursday, at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, the CEO of Strike, a Chicago-based payment app, hinted that many merchants such as McDonald’s, Walmart or even Starbucks could accept Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network.
Indeed, the young entrepreneur announced the integration of global e-commerce giant Shopify, but also a partnership with the world’s largest point-of-sale provider, NCR, as well as Blackhawk, a payment company specialized in e-commerce.
As a reminder, Lightning Network is a Layer 2 scaling solution backed by the Bitcoin blockchain. Its goal is to facilitate extremely fast and low-cost transactions. The Lightning Network was founded with the goal of making Bitcoin a true digital currency with a useful peer-to-peer payment function, as opposed to the “safe haven” vision adopted by many Bitcoin users.
Which merchants will be able to accept Bitcoin after this news?
According to Mallers, all merchants using Shopify are now able to accept Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network. Strike is reportedly open to partnering with the global network of merchants using Shopify, opening the door to the Lightning Network for them.
On the consumer side, this type of payment is available to anyone with a Lightning Network-enabled wallet. This also includes users of the CashApp application, a giant in the United States that recently added the Lightning Network to its payment methods.
According to some players in the ecosystem, Jack Mallers would be a bit forward about the ability of the Lightning Network to achieve such a high level of functionality so quickly.
Rene Pickhardt, data scientist, but especially Bitcoin and Lightning Network developer expressed on Twitter his concern after the announcements made in Miami:
I’m concerned that when it comes to reliability, even with the most robust payment streams, we will not be able to compete with what Jack Mallers calls the “boomer wazzzzup networks.”
Will McDonald’s accept Bitcoin tomorrow, as is being reported all over the web? That remains to be proven for now…
