Square Enables Default Bitcoin Payments Globally

This is such a huge development IMO. As someone who gets paid in Bitcoin, the idea of spending sats without the merchant knowing or caring is such a monumental quality of life upgrade. This opens up a lot of additional opportunities!

What's brilliant about the merchant who doesn't know or care about accepting Bitcoin, is that it makes the push for adoption more accessible, beyond a direct ideological push requiring us to convince or persuade. Merchants are incentivized to keep the default on to allow Bitcoin payments, because it only means more paying customers for them, in exchange for zero added effort.

I'd like to take this chance to address one argument I've heard against spending Bitcoin, which states that spending your Bitcoin isn't good for the network or the price, because you're transferring ownership from someone with high conviction, to someone who will sell it for fiat immediately. Spend and replace, they argue, is effectively a net neutral event.

I agree that while it would be most optimal to keep Bitcoin within a circular economy where people don't sell for fiat, I do think a spend and replace strategy is better than just net neutral, even in the worst case where the merchant converts all of it. Not because of any short term price impact, which I agree is neutral if you replace, but because of the long term effects.

I would much rather have a merchant accept Bitcoin and immediately sell it, than have them not accept it at all. It's an early crucial step in hyperbitcoinization:

• The more opportunities you have to spend Bitcoin, the more useful it is as money
• With Bitcoin being more useful as money, people will hold more of it to use it as such
• With increased hodling of Bitcoin by merchants and individuals, wages / salary paid in Bitcoin becomes more viable
• People who earn in Bitcoin and spend in Bitcoin, will almost certainly save more in Bitcoin by default than if they earned in fiat and buy Bitcoin as a separate event.

I recognize that I'm an outlier as someone who gets paid in Bitcoin, but I think more people would be open to the prospect if it were easier to pay with Bitcoin directly, and this is a big step in the right direction!

That is all. We are all still so early :)