The Bitcoin Asia convention held on Could 9 and 10, 2024 in Hong Kong demonstrated a major milestone within the adoption of bitcoin as a respectable medium of trade.
This text outlines the methods and applied sciences carried out to facilitate seamless bitcoin transactions for items and companies over the 2 days, leveraging the capabilities of self-custodial fee processing by means of BTCPay Server.
Government Abstract
All through the occasion, 212 Bitcoin transactions have been processed, involving 4 distributors and totaling 7,714,253 sats, equal to 36,974.63 HKD.
The typical transaction was roughly 36,560 sats (about 175 HKD). Notably, the system maintained full operational uptime with zero failures in bitcoin base chain or lightning community transactions.
What’s BTCPay Server?
With banks, you haven’t any possibility between self-custody or custodial fee processing.
For instance, when you wished to run a self-custody enterprise with fiat, you would need to run a money payments-only enterprise, which comes with big danger of theft when centralizing capital in a single place. This could additionally restrict your buyer base.
To increase our financial outreach past our native economies, we created fee networks and fee processors that permit for digital transactions.
However what have been the results of implementing custodial fee techniques over time? Why can’t now we have a digital self-custodial fee processor? What improvements, freedoms, and information do prospects & companies must sacrifice because of custodial fee processing? What if my digital type of fee (e.g., bank card, Apple Pay, Venmo) declines regardless that I’ve the funds in my account? What helpful information — each monetary and private — am I now making a gift of without cost due to these companies?
With BTCPay Server, we are able to facilitate the expertise of cash-like transactions digitally, which means we are able to make digital funds peer-to-peer. Transactions don’t require private info from the payer, nor do they require an middleman. This eliminates the dangers that come from each transacting with money and relying on an middleman.
BTCPay Server is free to make use of and fully open supply, which means BTCPay Server will not be an organization — it is merely code.
BTCPay Server is a bitcoin fee processor that permits companies and people to obtain funds straight, with out counting on third-party companies.
In contrast to conventional fee processors, BTCPay Server does custody funds and doesn’t cost any transaction charges.
BTCPay Server is a extremely adaptable fee processor. It may be built-in into current techniques with APIs, and each people and companies can tailor their fee processing expertise to satisfy particular wants, making certain a seamless integration into their operational frameworks.
Along with the options listed above, BTCPay Server helps what are referred to as Prism Funds.
This performance permits for the trustless distribution of funds throughout a number of accounts on the level of sale. This modern strategy essentially rethinks the stream of cash, enabling real-time compensation for stakeholders and staff.
How you can Use BTCPay Server
Step 1: Setup a BTCPay Server
For a complete information on organising a BTCPay Server, see this full step-by-step tutorial on YouTube.
Step 2: Making certain Liquidity and Value Stability
On the time of writing, the Lightning Community is the one Bitcoin scaling answer that maintains bitcoin’s cash-like properties in making funds with BTC.
The Lightning Community facilitates immediate settlement, does not require any KYC and gives close to non-existent charges, very similar to the expertise of utilizing money.
For the Lightning Community to operate, it wants liquidity. Offering liquidity typically means operating and managing a node your self, however BTCPay Server does this for you.
On the convention, BTCPay Servers nodes, at the side of Blink, which served as a liquidity supplier for the convention, operated flawlessly, making certain no fee failures.
Along with using an additional liquidity supplier, we additionally employed a worth hedging answer in case we skilled bitcoin worth volatility through the convention.
This danger wanted to be addressed as a result of distributors who accepted bitcoin on the convention wished to be paid out of their native foreign money as soon as the convention ended.
A bearish state of affairs for a vendor could be receiving a $10 fee bitcoin on the time of sale whereas the worth of bitcoin was excessive, after which, through the course of the convention, bitcoin’s worth might have dropped 50%.
In any such scenario, when it was time to carry out a settlement within the native foreign money for the seller, they might solely obtain $5 of their native foreign money, which is unacceptable.
To mitigate this danger, we used “stablesats”, a Blink function that permits for immediate conversion into an artificial model of a steady foreign money (such because the Hong Kong greenback) on the level of sale.
Extra info on Blink options and companies right here.
Step 3: Deploying Bodily POS Machines
Regardless of the digital nature of bitcoin transactions, bodily point-of-sale (POS) machines have been deployed to present a well-known checkout expertise to attendees and distributors.
We used POS machines from Bitcoinize. These units additionally facilitated the issuance of bodily receipts upon request.
Step 4: Simplifying Bitcoin Entry with Bolt Playing cards
To facilitate seamless bitcoin transactions on the convention, we additionally utilized Bolt Playing cards.
These customized “Bitcoin Asia” version playing cards, enabled attendees to transform fiat foreign money into bitcoin to be used throughout the occasion. The playing cards allowed for simple NFC tapping at POS units.
Step 5: Coaching for Retailers and Workers
A coaching session was performed earlier than the convention to familiarize distributors with learn how to use BTCPay Server.
The ten-minute session was efficient, with minimal questions from contributors.
A gaggle chat was arrange for help, which remained largely inactive as a result of easy operation of the fee system.
A full video of the coaching session is obtainable right here.
Conclusion
Because of free and open supply software program like BTCPay Server and modern options from corporations like Blink, transacting with bitcoin transactions on the Bitcoin Asia convention was extremely simple.
The success of utilizing BTCPay server on the Bitcoin Asia convention demonstrated the potential for wider adoption of bitcoin in on a regular basis commerce.
Think about using such options on your subsequent occasion or inside your native financial system.
