> Mainstream platforms accepting Bitcoin as an option is fine and great, but few if any are going to want to only accept Bitcoin.

For all of the talk (hype) about how crypto has the potential to avoid the exact type of meddling and manipulation and pressuring we’re seeing now, it surprises me that no equivalents to PayPal have really popped up - that best that can be done is apparently something along the lines of what Linux was on the desktop a decade or two ago. Basically, before Valve and others picked up the slack and worked on things your average person actually cares about - notably, gaming and simple(r) to use desktop environments and software stores.

Where’s the flagship platform for payments that’s built on crypto but lets you ignore the technical details, that’s trivial to implement as a merchant and is a download away on app stores? If there are a few of those, why would anyone bother with these puritan payment processors?

Using cryptocurrency would give them leverage in a future negotiation. The goal would not be to replace payments entirely with cryptocurrencies (they are pretty inefficient), but to reduce the monopolistic power of conventional payment processors and strike a better deal.

I would argue it's worth investing infrastructure into it, for the same reason that valve has invested infrastructure into linux to gain leverage over microsoft. Without leverage, negotiations get ugly: see the Epic vs Apple saga.

Bitcoin does not require any payment processor. That's its whole point: censorship-resistant, permissionless, p2p payment system.

Well I think the advantage is that the cryptocurrency payment processors are interchangeable. But your point mostly stands

>Porn is a tiny market. It’s not worth it losing the payment processors everyone is on to serve porn game buyers.

I agree with this point but I don't agree with the premise. I don't really care about the censorship of porn, but it is a slippery slope to censorship in general. If you give them an inch they will take a mile.

I think there is sometimes a business justification of putting your foot in the ground, even if the short term consequences are harsh.

> Porn is a tiny market.

I'm not sure I agree. In the context of gaming, perhaps, but most of the Internet traffic is basically pornography.

Third-parties take care of this bureaucracy for you. Check out the Phoenix wallet, for example.

(Unaffiliated, I hold some pocket money on there not to run a Lightning node myself)

The on-chain transaction is just to "fund" a channel between two parties. These two parties can then make unlimited trasnfers between each other instantaneously for free. These nodes are organised in a network and can relay payment from other nodes as well. It's a bit like the Internet. You don't need to peer with everybody, you just need a path from A to B.

If you and I have a channel funded with 100 sat, we can move these around as many times as we wish, even on behalf of others, but if you need to transfer more than you have on your side, you need to fund the channel with another on-chain transaction. That's where the Phoenix 1% fee comes from, as they deal with this exact problem for you, so you don't have to worry about it.

No. You can route through other people on the network, so you just need a path to the person through others.

1. Proof-of-work is a feature.

2. Just do the conversion at the time of sale.

3. Government prohibition and restriction of our rights is a terrible problem and it's why Bitcoin was invented in the first place. It's a necessary fight if only to keep government power in check, unless one really believes the State is always right and always has our best interest in mind. I don't.

>good luck figuring out how to get the user experience on both ends appear to be in USD

I think it works out fine with fixed/float exchanges. These are exchanges that let you agree on a fixed exchange rate for a small (<=%1 fee) or trade at a floating exchange rate. The fee covers the price risk