Sam Bourgi
El Salvador’s recognition of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender has opened up new payment options for its citizens, with fast-food empire McDonald’s reportedly accepting payments in the cryptocurrency through Lightning Network.
Journalist Aaron van Wirdum broke the news Tuesday after he visited a McDonald’s restaurant in El Salvador, where he was presented with a printed QR code directing him to an invoice page on Lightning Network. McDonald’s had 19 locations across the Latin American country as of 2019.
Just walked into a McDonald's in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin, tbh fully expecting to be told no.
But low and behold, they printed a ticket with QR that took me to a webpage with Lightning invoice, and now I'm enjoying my desayuno traditional! pic.twitter.com/NYCkMNbv7U September 7, 2021
Lightning is a layer-two payment protocol designed to make BTC transactions more scalable. Although Bitcoin has succeeded as an investable asset, its adoption as a medium of exchange has been limited. Bitcoin payments were at the core of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper describing BTC as electronic cash. (Interestingly, Nakamoto’s forum posts and correspondences used “cash” and “gold” synonymously.)
Sam Bourgi
El Salvador’s recognition of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender has opened up new payment options for its citizens, with fast-food empire McDonald’s reportedly accepting payments in the cryptocurrency through Lightning Network.
Journalist Aaron van Wirdum broke the news Tuesday after he visited a McDonald’s restaurant in El Salvador, where he was presented with a printed QR code directing him to an invoice page on Lightning Network. McDonald’s had 19 locations across the Latin American country as of 2019.
Just walked into a McDonald's in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin, tbh fully expecting to be told no.
But low and behold, they printed a ticket with QR that took me to a webpage with Lightning invoice, and now I'm enjoying my desayuno traditional! pic.twitter.com/NYCkMNbv7U September 7, 2021
Lightning is a layer-two payment protocol designed to make BTC transactions more scalable. Although Bitcoin has succeeded as an investable asset, its adoption as a medium of exchange has been limited. Bitcoin payments were at the core of Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 whitepaper describing BTC as electronic cash. (Interestingly, Nakamoto’s forum posts and correspondences used “cash” and “gold” synonymously.)
Brian Quarmby
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly threatened to sue Coinbase over a crypto yield program it deems as a security. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted on Wednesday that there has been some “really sketchy behavior coming out of the SEC recently” before launching into a 21 post thread detailing the SEC’s dealings with the firm.
Armstrong explained that the crypto exchange approached the SEC earlier this year to brief the enforcement body over the up-and-coming Coinbase Lend program that intends to offer 4% annual yield returns on deposits of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin.
According to the Coinbase CEO, the SEC responded by telling the firm that the lending program is a security without any explanation and threatened to sue if the service was launched:
“They refuse to tell us why they think it’s a security, and instead subpoena a bunch of records from us (we comply), demand testimony from our employees (we comply), and then tell us they will be suing us if we proceed to launch, with zero explanation as to why.”
Armstrong pointed out that there are other crypto firms on the market that currently provide similar lending services to their customers and called for the SEC to provide regulatory clarity on the topic. The SEC’s actions, if Armstrong has reported them accurately, appear to be bad news for competitors BlockFi and Celsius, which already offer crypto yield products. BlockFi is facing investigations in a number of states over its high-interest products.
This Daily Dose was brought to you by Cointelegraph.
