Day 9: Stop trying to make Bitcoin in brick & mortar happen

I'm a big fan of Lightning, the layer 2 payments network built on top of bitcoin.

I like the people working on Lightning, most of them are in it for the the right reasons. They are working to solve what I believe is an important problem: how to scale permissionless payments to the entire world.

That said, I'm confused as to why so many in the Lightning community continue to focus on in-person payments instead of payments on the internet. If the past decade has shown us anything, it's that in-person bitcoin payments have not gotten traction...a decade ago I could tell you a half a dozen places in Hong Kong that accepted Bitcoin...today, besides the ubiquitous Bitcoin ATMs and OTC shops, I couldn't even name one for you. Over that same period of time, internet payments with cryptocurrency have seen massive traction.

If you think about it, this all makes sense. If you are physically in the same room as someone, you have many options available for settling a transaction and there's always cash or barter as the censorship resistant back up option. And if you're not in the same room, before bitcoin, you had to pay through a trusted third party that could always veto or reverse your transaction. After bitcoin, you no longer need a third party, and no one can veto your exchange. Bitcoin payments revolutionized internet payments...it made the impossible possible.

The obvious thing to do is for the Lightning community to go after the users that use cryptocurrency every day. The people buying and selling things on the internet, minting inscriptions, running smart contracts, trading assets using defi etc.

So why don't they?