The Addition Of A Tipping Feature To Twitter May Make The Use Of Bitcoin More Appealing
The addition of a tipping feature to Twitter may make the use of Bitcoin more appealing
Tips, Twitter’s new tipping feature, were announced on Thursday, September 23, 2021, as part of the company's ongoing announcement of new features.
Because the microblogging platform tested a similar feature — Tip Jar — in May, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise.
While Tip Jar was initially only available to people who used Twitter in English, such as journalists and experts, Tips is now available on iOS devices and will be made available on Android devices in the near future.
Chipper Cash, an African payment platform, is among the more than a dozen third-party payment platforms that it supports. Twitter users will now be able to send money to others directly from their profiles.
Surprisingly, the tipping feature allows users to send and receive Bitcoin, the world's most popular cryptocurrency.
Strike, a wallet built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, is now available for use by Twitter users, according to a blog post on the social media platform.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a vocal supporter of Bitcoin, once predicted that it would only be a matter of time before the social media platform began to accept bitcoin payments.
This will be made possible by Twitter's decision to enable Bitcoin tipping through a wallet that makes use of the Lightning Network, which will accelerate Bitcoin transfers. This could increase the appeal of virtual currencies, resulting in a greater number of people using them.
What is the Bitcoin Lightning Network?
Bitcoin's Lightning Network is a route that makes it easier to conduct Bitcoin transactions off-chain, or outside of the Bitcoin network, than it would otherwise be. It is, in essence, a network that allows transactions to take place immediately and then be recorded on the Blockchain later in time.
The Lightning Network was developed in order to address Bitcoin's scalability issue. Bitcoin transactions are impractical for everyday transactions due to their slow speed, which is in addition to their high level of volatility.
As a point of reference, Visa, a digital payments platform, claims that it can process 65,000 transactions per second on average. However, according to a news report published by Bitcoin.com, it is only capable of 1,700 operations. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is only capable of seven transactions per second — a staggering disparity in performance between the two.
The speed of Bitcoin transactions is a trade-off for the benefits of decentralisation and security. Miners verify the validity of transactions on the network by solving complex math problems with powerful computer hardware, a process that ensures security but is time-consuming and expensive.
Bitcoin can be used for everyday transactions
When using the Lightning Network, you can avoid dealing with miners and instead establish an off-chain or direct channel between the sender and the receiver. Tipping in Bitcoin on Twitter will now be instantaneous as a result of this. According to Investopedia, "a lightning network channel is a transaction mechanism that allows two parties to communicate with one another." The parties can make or receive payments from one another through the use of channels."
Once the channel has been closed, the transaction is recorded in the Blockchain database. Consequently, a supermarket that accepts Bitcoin can establish a channel of communication with customers in order to speed up transactions.
Strike CEO, Jack Mallers, stated in an interview with Bloomberg that integrating the technology on Twitter will have far-reaching implications that go beyond Twitter and even Strike.
"You're talking about a monetary network that extends across the entire globe and has the potential to achieve instant, nearly free global cash finality," says the author.
It is the beginning of a larger trend in which companies use the world's first global financial network to interact with their customers in a monetary manner.
El Salvador was the first country to legalize Bitcoin as legal tender, and Strike is the wallet that facilitates the exchange of Bitcoin in the country. While Strike addresses the issue of speed, the issue of volatility continues to be a concern.
As Mallers explains it, "You can send bitcoin payments in dollars and receive bitcoin payments in dollars if you use dollars to send and make bitcoin payments."
Micheal Saylor, the founder and CEO of MicroStrategy, a business intelligence and software company, has dubbed the technology the "future of global payments," according to the company.
Speed comes at a high price.
While the Lightning Network provides the convenience of immediate transactions at low fees, it also has some drawbacks.
According to Cointelegraph, offline transaction scams are among the most difficult problems that the Lightning Network must deal with.
A payment channel can be closed by one party while the other party is still online, allowing the former to steal funds from the latter.
Payments are also unable to move forward on the Lightning Network. Although they are almost always reimbursed, the process can take several days.
In general, because cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology are still in their infancy, they are constantly undergoing improvements and innovation.
Bitcoin, according to Jack Dorsey, will unite the world and bring peace; however, only time will tell whether or not his prediction will come true.
