The only business in Summit County that accepts bitcoin?

So far as I am able to find out, Precision Ski and Sport is the only business in all of Summit County, Colorado that accepts payment in bitcoin.  As one might expect, the only way that this merchant accepts bitcoin is via the Lightning network.

As you can see from the cash register receipt shown at right, there is a “units” problem.   It is not true that 1462 bitcoin equal one dollar, as shown on the receipt.  1462 bitcoin actually add up to slightly more than one hundred million dollars.   It is also not true that I paid 7926 bitcoin.  If I had paid that number of bitcoin, I would have been handing over more than half a billion dollars. 

A moment’s reflection reveals that the receipt should have used a unit of satoshis (sats).  My purchase was about 7926 sats (not bitcoin).  The exchange rate was about 1462 sats (not bitcoin) to the dollar.

The natural next question is whether the transaction really did settle as fast as lightning, and the answer is, yes it did.

The alert reader also wonders what fees were incurred.  As the sender, I incurred a fee of three sats, which amounts to about ⅕ of a cent, or about 0.04% of the amount being paid.  The merchant incurred no fee, because the payment service provider (Square) is waiving its fees on bitcoin through the year 2026.  Square says that starting in 2027, it will charge a 1% commission for processing bitcoin.

I carried out this transaction using Muun, which seems to be the most popular self-custodial Lightning network wallet for Android.  It seems to me that Muun is a must-have for the Android user who wants to carry a little “walking around money” for in-person incidental purchases such as the occasional cup of coffee.  You can read more about Muun in this blog article.

The alert reader wonders, what exactly was the payment process?  What happened when I walked into Precision Ski and Sport and tried to purchase that five-dollar ski strap?

The sales clerk tapped on the screen of the Square cash register to select the merchandise (here, that five-dollar ski strap).  The clerk then tapped on the screen to select “bitcoin” as the type of payment.  From my point of view as a customer, what happened next was that a display showed a QR code with a small ₿ symbol in the center of the QR code.  I opened the Muun app on my smart phone, tapped in my PIN code, and clicked to ask the app to scan the QR code.  Next, the app displayed the number of sats to be paid (7926 sats) and the fee that I would pay (3 sats).  I was invited to click “confirm”, which I did.  Within one second, the cash register said “approved” and my app said the same.  It was as quick as quick could be.

Have you used Lightning?  Have you set up your Square point-of-sale system to receive bitcoin?  Do you favor some other “pocket change” wallet for smart-phone usage?  Please post a comment below.