Hi all! For new users that need to buy Sats, for example a new user that wants to start zapping others but doesn’t care too much about earning zaps themselves (shy to post, wants more sats than any “Hello everyone” post might bring in, etc.) what are the options?
Let’s assume nobody in these users’ social circles have Sats or have even ever heard of Sats. So the only option is to just go out and buy Sats somewhere, most likely with a card.
Let’s also assume they’re not going to buy on-chain via some wallet app and convert, or that they have any idea what “on-chain” even means (or that they have any idea what LN means, or what Layer2 means, etc.)
They’ve just learned there’s this thing called a Sat, and that Sats are like the “pennies of Bitcoin", and now they need to go out and buy some of these Sat things. That is it. That's literally it.
And they're hoping this is easy. And they have pretty low tolerance for complex multi-step processes. And they're not going to spend 30 minutes doing online research. They just want to quickly load up on some of these Bitcoin pennies that are apparently called Sats.
Also assume they're mobile users.
What are their options?
- Use Apple in-app purchase on Primal app (Apple takes 30%)
- What else?
#asknostr
Replies (22)
I used strike and a local minibits wallet on android.
The big problem is wallets. Maybe primal is the easiest option, but they host the wallet right? Bypass the app store and use a web browser or whatever.
Hi, thanks. Minibits app on Android I'm not seeing any option to buy sats, hitting Top Up just creates a lightning invoice. Which I think will frustrate people who download it with the intention to simply buy Sats and get on with it, have nobody in their lives they can ask for Sats from.
Have you found anything on the mobile web where you can easily create a wallet and buy Sats with a card? Like in 5 minutes?
if they're nice, we'll give them sats
Strike..
Or peach
People are nice here, I'll readily admit that. But I'm thinking of new users who wouldn't want to go around trying to impress people they've never heard of in exchange for a few Sats. For example a creator they like is on Nostr, they want to zap that creator a few Sats to unlock some content. Or whatever.
They have no time for networking and ice-breakers. They just want to get a hold of 10k Sats right now, so they can get on with whatever they're trying to do. (It can take weeks for a new user to "impress" their way to 10k sats). What are their options?
Hey thanks, hadn't heard of this peach! trying it out now.
Happy stacking fren
If you want another option, I highly recommend Strike (and its CEO
@jack mallers is on Nostr):
Strike
Referral
Buy bitcoin instantly with low fees at Strike. Sign up now to enjoy fast, secure transactions and a seamless bitcoin purchasing experience today.
Note: that is an invite link from my account - feel free to ignore my referral link and just install the app raw dog. This is a real recommendation, not referral farming
Your question has me wishing there was a service that worked like this:
- Buy Bitcoin with a credit card
- Send the new Bitcoin (optionally via Lightning) to some address
- Doesn't include its own wallet
Just a one-off buy-and-send service like that, rather than a whole wallet integration or full social app.
MoonPay
Buy Bitcoin | How to buy BTC | MoonPay
MoonPay offers a fast and easy way to buy Bitcoin, the world's leading cryptocurrency. Buy Bitcoin (BTC) securely today with your preferred payment...
is close, I guess....
Ah thanks! I installed it the other day and have been waiting for the proof of address verification to go through, I guess that might take a day or two more.
Yes I tried Moonpay but their AI couldn't parse my proof of address and so I gave up.
And yes, would be great for something like you mentinoed.
I can picture a creator coming to Nostr, some of that creator's followers follow them over, poke around, learn they need to send this creator some of these Sat coin thingies to be able to unlock certain content. They don't have the time or patience to network around in the hopes of earning Sats form Nostr regulars (and even if they do it might take weeks to earn enough). And if they sign up for Strike and slog through the document upload then by the time their account is activated (few days) all is forgotten.
I think probably Primal wallet is the only real option, it's a chunk for Apple fees and it caps out pretty low but it's more or less instant.
If you come across anything else though do let me know, really appreciate it.
I wonder if #cashu mints backed by fiat (swapping with lightning mints) would do the trick...
I'm not sure. Be it nutzaps or old-school zaps, at some point dollars, euros and friends need to cross the border into lightning land.
Would be great if Nostr had it's own peer to peer exchange, small amounts only, but I don't think that's feasible either due to payment concerns.
Bit of a head-scratcher. Feels like an arcade where the games are a lot of fun but only the staff have coins.
A nostr-based peer to peer exchange is entirely possible.
Might even be able to sort of get a hacky version of that out of my forthcoming project
- Patron: "I want to buy sats for fiat, I have a credit card"
- Arbiter/Escrow: "okay, I have a credit card processing app, I'll take your dollars and hold them" (maybe the Arbiter runs some ecash mints that make these kinds of swaps trivial)
- Free Agent: "I'll sell some sats for that much fiat" (zaps this amount to Arbiter)
- Arbiter checks everything, zaps the Patron, coordinates payment with the Free Agent, takes his small fee
Of course this may be highly risky / illegal in a bunch of ways, and there are good reasons systems like RoboSats exist... But the basic, dangerous-mode mechanism could be easily supported by Nostr, and almost is already
Ah hah, you've definitely found a good itch to scratch there.
I can see what you're doing as being useful for a whole bunch of things once the parties involved are all satted-up, super interesting. Commissioning creators comes to mind.
As for getting satted up in the first place, I'm with you on the risk element.
Part of me thinks Primal’s solution, by means of which new users are essentially buying pre-paid zaps via Apple or Google, is the only on-ramp that won’t have an egregious drop-off rate. Like I was the head of Nostr marketing and growing the zap economy was my main KPI then I'd channel all new users to Primal. What they've got there seems to be fully-compliant, fast and clean. Single point of entry to the zap economy isn't so robust though.
Basically agreed with everything you're saying there!
@Boardwalk seems to be working on integrating bank/debit card payments right into their ecash wallet, which could subsequently be integrated into Nostr clients (nor NIP-60 maybe)...
But I agree that "the most convenient UX always wins, broadly" even though that force has the unfortunate side-effect of sneakily entrenching "bad stuff" like centralization, custodians and rent-seekers.
Got real deep real fast here, but I essentially see this small discussion as a shard of a much larger civilizational issue: can underfunded, principles-driven, decentralized islands build better "sovereign UXes" that outcompete (or at least keep pace with) hyper-(fiat)-funded, centralized organizations? In a nutshell, I think civilization and freedom depend on the freaks somehow pulling a win on this age-old battle. ...and unsurprisingly, I personally think Bitcoin is the ace in the sleeve of the freaks, if we can keep it (Benjamin Franklin style)
I buy with strike. Minibits is just a wallet.
Crypto is hard, but probably don't want your point of purchase to be the same as your wallet short term.
But Strike can work on its own afaik.
Er, beyond short term*
Some things in life aren't instant gratification. I know it's not the way of the world these days, but that's probably not a good thing.
The wider Nostr sales pitch in makes heavy use of 'instant', though. Instantly onboard to new apps, instantly interact with your existing social graph in these new apps, instantly transfer value to another person, instantly switch from client to client, instantly regain access to your graph in the event a client or relay blocks you (or someone else), etc. This is just another instant to add to all those instants that already make up the pitch.
I see that. But wallets are not part of what we call nostr. Though we can use wallets with it.
That is to say, wallets and nostr work well together, but they are seperate things.
Credit cards and Amazon work together, but http doesn't issue you a credit card. And that credit card can be used not only through http, but also at the local coffee shop.
And unlike credit cards, crypto is hard to deal with, but that's not a nostr problem, it's a crypto (and government) problem.
I understand instant this and that, but nostr apps do facilate all that, even payments by hooking into wallets. But the wallet itself is not an issue for nostr to solve.
That all Said, some apps do handle a lot of that, like fountain. I hear fountain is a great way to get started in crypto.
I would argue that since NIP-60 wallets *are* a part of what we call nostr. A NIP-60 wallet lives on the relays, no different than a Kind1 post. A regular LN zap is a report that could be repurposed to be a report of any outside event. But a nutzap is different, it's fully native and can only be a report of a cashu transaction from a native wallet. Basically NIP-60 changes things, and it looks like NIP-60 and cashu have unstoppable momentum in nostr now.
