Years ago, when was just a wee lad, a crypto user going by Laszlo made the world’s first real-world transaction with . In what became a historic event in this nascent community, the BitcoinTalk user purchase pizza for 10,000 , then valued at less than $40.
Since that date using crypto to purchase pizza, or other articles of at all for that matter, has faded to the back of this industry’s collective mind. But, this changed with a recent application/integration launched on the Lightning Network.
You Can Purchase Domino’s For bitcoin
Fold, a crypto payment upstart founded by , recently released a fun portal based on the Lightning Network, ’s foremost scaling solution. For those who missed the memo, the application has been fittingly dubbed Lightning Pizza, as it allows consumers to purchase Domino’s with Lightning transactions, which are near-instant, effectively free, and (eventually) secured on-chain. Fold’s product lead, Will Reeves, the following about his company’s newest venture:
“We’re trying to make fun again and illustrate that lightning is at a point where it is mainstream-ready.”
While the application is currently centered around pizza, the Fold team intends to integrate Lightning transactions into Starbucks, Whole Foods, Dunkin Donuts, Target, and Uber payments over the next few months.
It is important to note, however, that these aren’t official integrations with the aforementioned outlets. Fold accomplishes this through a third-party crypto-to-fiat system, which places orders on the behalf of users and converts the transacted through Lightning channels into U.S. dollars.
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Crypto Community Catches On
Within hours, if not minutes, the product caught on. Some of the biggest names in the Lightning Network and development space quickly took to Twitter to divulge that they had indulged in Fold’s application.
Hodlonaut, the community member behind the Trust Chain initiative, which saw participation from , Andreas Antonopoulos, Anthony Pompliano, Changpeng Zhao, among other industry insiders, lauded the offering, writing:
A new dawn of pizza transactions is upon us. Behold the LN pizza! ⚡️⚡️🍕
— hodlonaut🌮⚡🔑 (@hodlonaut)
Others actually used the smile-inducing integration to purchase some Domino’s. Dan, a research analyst at The Block, noted that while he doesn’t buy Domino’s, he does when there’s a integration.
Bart Stephens, a venture capitalist at Capital, also took to Twitter to express his excitement, snapping a picture of one of his coworkers, a Casa node, and a piece of company-branded merchandise.
Lightning 🌩 pizza 🍕 achievement unlocked today 🙌🏼 cc:
— Bart Stephens (@pbartstephens)
This comes just days after Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, that his upstart, Square, will eventually integrate the Lightning Network in some capacity. A storm is coming, but where will lightning strike next?
Featured Image from Shutterstock
Published at Mon, 18 Feb 2019 01:59:30 +0000
