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Weird. Have you thought about using Wells Fargo's web interface to send the money? It's usually not hard to do if you have two account numbers.
Both have to be in WF, or you have to use Zelle or wire transfer (big fees). I ended up using WF Business Pay that i used for employee payroll...
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Why would somebody who doesn't have a bank account be more capable of using a provider on the lightning network?
You just need a phone, that's it. Banking requires all the infrastructure, etc.
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They are using lightning network which allows almost instant and practically free Bitcoin payments.
LN requires opening and closing channels, each of which have to be done as a regular Bitcoin transaction. The value proposition of LN is that repeated transactions with the same entity (or some subset of) can be done without high fees, but considering almost nobody is currently using LN that doesn't change things right now.
It's a fair point, but I don't honestly think that most people who've studied Bitcoin for more than a minute wants to use it for transactions. More and more people are seeing Bitcoin as either a store of wealth or a money making scheme. In either of those cases, the transaction fees really don't matter as much.
Incessantly bringing up the transaction fees seems to be missing the contemporary vision of BTC. The original intent of BTC is pretty much dead outside of black markets, and even then BTC wouldn't be a first choice.
If two Bitcoin forks both claim they are the "real bitcoin", who decides which one is the real legal tender? El Salvador courts?
The High Council of Shitcoins, of course. Court fees payable in Shiba.
How can you legally define what "bitcoin" is, when that definition is not clear?
Most people will tell you "bitcoin is whatever is in the consensus in the last release of Bitcoin Core, based on the bitcoin github repository"... but that is still kind of finicky
Bitcoin to their credit does not change the consensus rules all that much (only via "soft forks"). But still.
Is code in bitcoin github repository what now decides what is legal tender in El Salvador?
Does El Salvador now need to agree with all the decisions Bitcoin Core team makes? What if they don't like Taproot?
A lot of the Bitcoin software around still doesn't allow bech addresses. Does all El Salvador citizens now need to support them? Even when the software doesn't? Is bech32 part of "bitcoin" as defined by El Salvador?
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
Lightning does work. I've used it myself as have many others. You should really work on explaining what it is you actually mean by that statement instead. Apparently they are using Lightning and a service LN Strike that recently launched. https://twitter.com/starkness/status/1402635954653904902?s=2...
I think it's time that we need some expert opinion and debunking of bitcoin. Elon Musk sold his bitcoins, Bill Gates was against it, Warren Buffet mocked it. One could easily make a fun documentary about all the disappointments of bitcoin. The MtGox theft was a wakeup call.
Buffett has also said that he does not understand technology.
> The El Salvador President has previously said the move will open up financial services to the 70% of Salvadoreans who do not have bank accounts. Right. People who can't even afford a bank account would now all be using financial services by paying 10 dollars per transaction.
Furthermore, the system in question is not Layer 1 Bitcoin, but Layer 2 Lightning. To use Lightning, one must perform a Bitcoin transaction to open a channel– akin to opening a bank account– which provides access to the entire lightning network.
I find opening a bank account for less than a dollar very attractive.
That being said, layer 2 fees exist as well– you must pay someone, usually a hub, to securely lock some amount of Bitcoin to a channel so that you may transact. (Note that the secure lock isn't a security deposit; a channel be closed with funds returned without any third-party trust.)
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What the normal people will use in the beginning is going to be non-custodial LN based solution like strike. Minimal fees, easy to use. If you get a bit more, move to custodial LN wallet/onchain transactions. More fees, more security and less trust. And once you have too much BTC start storing them in an offline cold storage.
The idea that "normal people" will be able to use bitcoin at all without getting their private keys stolen is laughable. Think of how often online bank accounts get hacked in the US, except the difference now is that your money is gone, permanently.