Twitter just became the most convenient payment network on the planet

While China got the most headlines last week, the most important piece of news is Twitter adding the ability to tip using the lightning network so that users can now get paid in bitcoin. As of Friday, Twitter can now perform instant settlement, at no cost, anywhere in the world using Bitcoin’s payment rails. I previously wrote how the Lightning Network and Strike App are making bitcoin a superior medium of exchange. Now a few hundred million users have a convenient way and a reason to use the Bitcoin network. If you would like to see just how quick and easy this feature is to use, I highly suggest checking out this video of Jack Mallers, the founder of Strike, sending money internationally via Twitter.

Truth is, I’m still processing what this all means but I do have a few initial thoughts.

• Growth of Bitcoin — The number people using bitcoin was already at an all-time high in and usage was already accelerating. That was BEFORE this announcement. It will be interesting to see what will happen to bitcoin adoption now that all of twitter’s hundreds of millions of users have an easy, intuitive on-ramp for using crypto.
• RIP Western Union — Anyone can now send money, in any currency (fiat or crypto), anywhere in the world instantaneously for nearly zero cost through Twitter. They don’t even have to know the person; they simply need to know their twitter handle. Western Union, which is based on decades old money rails and has physical stores worldwide, can take upwards of a week and cost upwards of 30% in fees. Western Union simply won’t be able to compete given its cost structure. Thanks to Jack Dorsey and Jack Mallers, Western Union officially became the next Blockbuster Video last Friday. Maybe sometime in the future they will make a documentary about the last Western Union store.
• This is just the start — This isn’t a private, one-off partnership. What Strike did was take the infrastructure they built for their mobile app and made it accessible to any other service via an API. Twitter just so happened to be the first to integrate Strike’s API, but it certainly won’t be the last. Any content creator or commerce provider should take advantage of this. It will be very interesting to see who else leverages this capability in new and interesting ways. It will also be very interesting to see how Visa or Mastercard respond given they charge businesses 2–3% per transaction. If I operated a business that ran on slim margins (ie: a grocery store), I’d be very tempted to encourage my customers to pay via Twitter right now and have an additional 2–3% flow to my bottom line.
• The Lightning Network’s aha moment — I previously wrote about how the lightning network was approaching an inflection point. That was back in August (Newsletter #9), before the network began onboarding an entire country (El Salvador) and one of the largest social media platforms (Twitter). Paying using the Lightning Network will transform from a novelty to a superior experience in the coming years. I can’t wait to see what the growth on the Lightning Network looks like six months or a year from now.