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Bitcoin Gaming Studio Pnkfrg Raises $3 Million For Mobile Games

16/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

Pnkfrg is a new mobile gaming studio building on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network targeting a casual, F2P creator economy experience.

  • Pnkfrg, a new gaming studio building mobile F2P games on the Bitcoin Lightning Network just raised $3 million.
  • The funds will be used to develop games targeting a F2P circular creator economy with a casual experience.
  • The studio based in Berlin and Helsinki includes team leads from the Candy Crush Saga.

Pnkfrg studios, a mobile gaming studio startup designing games for the Lightning Network on Bitcoin, has raised over $3 million in a seed round, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

The funds will be used to develop a casual gaming experience built on the Lightning Network. With a core focus on mobile gaming, pnkfrg studios focuses on free-to-play (F2P) economics which allow participating gamers to engage in economies without requiring funds be spent to enjoy the game. The studio intends to integrate the creator economy into the mobile experience driving a circular economy that allows users to earn and spend within the ecosystem.

“We founded pnkfrg studios because we believe in a paradigm shift in casual mobile gaming as well as in a new way of digital financial transactions. Players and creators seek to be rewarded for their time, want to own and trade digital assets, and expect to gain value for their skills and contribution while having a fun time” said Philipp Lanik, CEO and co-founder of pnkfrg studios.

Continuing on the circular economy, Lanik noted “With our product we are addressing the needs of the generation of mobile natives and social creators,” as many participants in digital economies are looking for ways to become native to the environment they choose.

Seed round funding partners included: Stillmark, Velo Partners, Fulgur Ventures. The funding was led by LVP, who is a gaming industry expert, and Initial Capital.

“Bitcoin’s payments network – the Lightning Network – is the only protocol within the broader cryptocurrency field that has demonstrably established the ability for instant, nearly free transactions, across the globe, 24/7 and at scale,” Alyse Killeen, founding managing partner of Stillmark said. “Moreover, Lightning payments are economical at very low value – at just a fraction of a cent – making micropayments a native capability.”

Filed Under: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Magazine, business, English, Games, lightning network, News, Pnkfrg Studios

Can Bitcoin Fix Micropayments?

10/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

Bitcoin offers an opportunity to allow people to make micropayments, which could provide solutions for content monetization, online tipping and more.

Micropayments were all the rage in the 1990s. The idea of allowing customers to pay tiny fees for physical or online products was thrilling and received a lot of attention. However, early micropayment models failed to solve the problem of incurring large costs on processing tiny transactions. This is why micropayments haven’t taken off, years later after the idea was conceived.

But Bitcoin may offer — finally! — a workable model for micropayments for businesses and customers. We’ll explore how Bitcoin facilitates microtransactions and what benefits this technology offers.

A Brief Introduction To Micropayments

Micropayments typically refer to transfers below a specific value threshold. Think of a micropayment as a really small transaction or payment — like the $1.20 you pay for a cup of coffee.

Micropayments have received considerable attention from companies and researchers, and for good reason: Micropayments have the potential to unlock new income streams for businesses and increase value for customers.

Let’s imagine you visit Billy’s shop downtown for a cup of coffee, which costs $3.20. You don’t have any cash on you, so paying with a credit card looks like the best option. But there’s a slight problem: Billy won’t accept transactions below $5 because the payments provider often charges a base fee in addition to a percentage of the full cost for processing payments. For Billy to break even, the value of the transaction must be higher than the processing cost. Paying a fee on your meager purchase would simply be economic suicide. The transaction breaks down, with both sides losing out on benefits. You can’t get your caffeine fix and Billy loses potential income. The latter point may seem trivial until 10-15 customers face similar issues and walk away empty-handed.

Micropayments represent a new opportunity for businesses and customers to maximize their utility. Businesses can provide low-value services to customers without incurring losses. The concept also affords customers more freedom of choice and reduces barriers to purchasing items.

Having understood the value of micropayments, let’s see how Bitcoin fits into the picture.

Why Use Bitcoin For Micropayments?

The idea of micropayments has been around for as long as the internet itself, as articles like this one shows. Microsoft was one of the firms working on enabling micropayments until it scrapped its plans.

Historical experiments with micropayments have followed the same principle: aggregate tiny fees into a considerable amount before releasing them to merchants. In most cases, the user would have a digital wallet where they could deposit a fixed sum and authorize withdrawals for certain payments. However, the early solutions faced a big problem from the get-go: centralization. Just like credit cards, the digital wallets used for micropayments were controlled by third-party services. This created security risks for users, especially if hackers breached company servers. Moreover, users had to hand their personal information to companies, giving companies the freedom to sell their data.

Moreover, the minimum payment unit of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar makes them impractical for true micropayments. For example, the cent ($0.01) is the smallest unit of a dollar. Which means we physically cannot use it for payments lower than one cent.

As programmable money, Bitcoin doesn’t have the same minimum-unit problem as fiat currencies. For instance, you can divide one bitcoin into 100,000,000 sub-units to get a “satoshi” — which is worth less than a fraction of one cent.

Bitcoin exists as a decentralized, secure and trustless payments network. To make micropayments, you only need a Bitcoin address, which you can create in minutes. No company is holding your wallet or identity details, reducing the risk associated with using micropayment services. Finally, Bitcoin enables instant, near-feeless transactions through “payment channels,” which we explain later in this article. Payment channels allow two parties to bundle several transactions into one, removing the need to pay fees on all but one transaction.

How Do Bitcoin Micropayments Work?

A Bitcoin skeptic reading this article would have a hard time believing bitcoin can be useful for small transactions. Why would any sensible person opt to pay expensive miner fees and wait about 10 minutes to buy a cup of coffee with bitcoin?

Enter the Lightning Network.

Lightning Network is a Layer 2 infrastructure built to operate on top of Bitcoin. Because Lightning Network uses off-chain payment channels, transactions don’t have to pass through the blockchain, significantly shrinking fees and wait times.

We’ll use the example of buying coffee from Billy’s shop to explain how a Lightning-powered bitcoin micropayment works:

To open a Lightning Network channel with Billy, you must first deposit some units of bitcoin on the main network. Once this transaction is broadcast and confirmed on the blockchain, the channel becomes active. All payments you make to Billy get deducted from your initial deposit of bitcoin.

If the initial deposit runs out, you can choose to refill the channel with more bitcoin. Otherwise, both of you agree to end the transaction and broadcast the final state of the channel to the Bitcoin network. All previous transactions are bundled into one and recorded on the blockchain.

Although multiple transactions may have passed through the payment channel, the Bitcoin blockchain doesn’t record each of them. Instead, it records the first transaction opening the channel and the final transaction closing the channel.

With this system, you can open a tab with Billy and keep buying cups of coffee for weeks or even months. Billy wouldn’t have to pay huge fees to process those small payments. And you can bypass the payment threshold to get your coffee every day. A win-win solution.

Applications Of Bitcoin Micropayments

Buying coffee isn’t the only application of bitcoin micropayments. The internet itself is ripe for the introduction of micropayment-based revenue models. Below are some applications of bitcoin-powered micropayments for online users:

Content Monetization

For years, online content creators have found it difficult to monetize content. In lieu of any sustainable monetization system, many have turned to digital advertising to recoup investments in content creation. But digital advertising has attracted negative coverage in recent years, and ad blockers are rapidly making this an unviable income mechanism.

The most popular tactic for content creators is to charge consumers subscription fees for accessing content. However, subscription models are not the ultimate solution. For starters, subscription models require a higher level of commitment from customers. If you like a product, then paying a subscription fee may seem trivial. Someone else may be unwilling to commit so much until they’d have had a feel for the service.

Let’s not forget subscription models have many bottlenecks. Subscribers need to have a credit card, but getting one isn’t the easiest thing to do. Putting content behind a paywall means losing out on unbanked customers or those who’d prefer an easier method of paying for content.

Bitcoin micropayments can succeed where traditional subscription models and digital advertising fail in terms of helping creators create revenue streams. Near-feeless micropayments — the kind Bitcoin promises with the Lightning Network — can allow creators to extract value from their work.

A video content creator can charge viewers for each second of a video they watch. A writer can ask readers to pay a small fee for each piece instead of asking for a full subscription. Musicians can charge for individual song streams instead of forcing listeners to buy an entire catalog.

This technology can potentially be the game-changer for content creators struggling to make money. Micropayments present a better alternative to intrusive advertising and clunky subscription models.

Online Tipping

Integrating Lightning Network into social networks can make it easier for followers to support their favorite content creators. Users can keep paying out small amounts as virtual tips cheaply and quickly, without the hassle of connecting credit cards.

Tippin.me is a project using the Lightning Network to enable micropayments on Twitter. Users link their Twitter accounts to a Lightning Network wallet and can share QR codes which anyone can scan to send a small tip. Users can then cash out these tips via the Tippin.me site.

Pay-As-You-Go Subscriptions

Earlier, we spoke of the problems associated with forcing subscriptions on consumers of digital content. However, the subscription model also extends into the realm of the services we use every day.

Think of the times you needed an API service or a web app for a critical, one-off task — only to be hit with a monthly subscription offer. Just like the situation with the coffee shop, forcing users to make purchases above a certain value threshold hinders transactions.

With micropayments, service providers can process numerous one-off payments from users. By making it easier for customers to pay small amounts, online businesses can significantly increase earnings.

More importantly, users can get full value for their money. Instead of paying for a full month’s subscription — which they won’t fully use — they can control how much they pay for a service.

The applications of pay-as-you-go subscriptions are endless. This includes paying for software-as-a-service tools, APIs, serverless technologies, content distribution, one-off services and many more unexplored use-cases.

Marketing and Engagement

Brave, a privacy-focused browser, has shown the possibility of powering online marketing and engagement with cryptocurrency. Users get paid BAT tokens anytime they watch an ad, but they can also pay an inconsequential amount to skip those ads.

In the future, sites may integrate Lightning Network to pay users that engage with content, e.g., watching a video. Businesses can get better value for their content and users get rewarded for their engagement. Again, a win-win solution for everyone involved.

Gaming

Gaming is another industry that could use a well-designed micropayment system. This is especially important for indie game developers who may invest a lot of effort, time and money into making games, without any means of making profits. Charging a sign-up fee could solve the problem, but it’ll only turn off potential players.

Instead, game developers could charge small fees for users to unlock new characters, features and access special levels. Because these transactions have reasonably low values, players won’t feel like they’re being squeezed for money and developers get rewarded for their creative efforts.

Self-Generated Data

Years ago, British mathematician Clive Humby declared, “Data is the new oil.” Today’s digital economy is fueled by data, with companies investing considerably in data collection, management and analytics. However, users rarely get any value from the data that businesses use to fuel their operations. Now, with more awareness, people are looking to monetize their self-generated data.

With micropayments, we can make this a reality. For example, websites could pay users for their online activity. Companies could pay owners for data generated by internet of things (IoT) devices like smart electric meters. It could even extend to data generated by health devices, like wearables.

Micropayments Can Scale Bitcoin Adoption

While the micropayment use-cases mentioned in this article are experimental, they may reach critical mass in the not-too-distant future. Of course, the volatility of bitcoin’s price could hinder micropayments, but mass adoption is predicted to bring stability to the price.

More importantly, micropayments could be Bitcoin’s killer application. Bitcoin-enabled micropayments can be applied to many business models, triggering global adoption and increasing network effects.

This is a guest post by Emmanuel Awosika. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.

Filed Under: Bitcoin Magazine, business, Content creators, English, Lightning, lightning network, micropayments, Opinion, Tippin.me

Tauros, IBEX Mercado Partner For Mexico’s First Lightning-Enabled Bitcoin Exchange

05/05/2022 by Idelto Editor

IBEX Mercado has partnered with Mexican bitcoin-exchange Tauros for the first Lightning-enabled exchange in Mexico.

  • Tauros has become the first Lightning-enabled bitcoin exchange in Mexico.
  • The Lightning Network functionality was achieved through a partnership with IBEX Mercado, a Lightning infrastructure company.
  • Tauros users will be able to interact with Lightning-enabled POS systems directly from their wallets with almost instant settlement and low fees.

Tauros has become the first Lightning-enabled bitcoin exchange in Mexico thanks to a new partnership with IBEX Mercado, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine.

“Lightning is leading the most radical financial empowerment in history and will set a new standard for the rest of the networks in the market. Bitcoin is the king of digital transactions, but without Lightning it’s stuck in the financial slow lane,” said Salvador Melendez, CEO of Tauros.

Users of Tauros will be able to send bitcoin over the Lightning network almost instantaneously with almost non-existent fees thanks to the low-cost nature of the Lightning Network. Through IBEXHub, IBEX’s Lightning-as-a-Service technology, anyone using Tauros will also be able to deposit or withdraw funds almost immediately.

Customers of Tauros interacting with a Lightning-enabled point of sale (POS) will be able to make purchases directly from their Tauros wallet in their local currency. Lightning allows businesses to accept these transactions and choose whether or not they wish to receive bitcoin or fiat currency, a feature brought to the world stage at Bitcoin 2022 when the CEO of Strike, a Lightning infrastructure company, announced the functionality.

“If 2021 was the year that Lightning burst into the Bitcoin ecosystem, 2022 will be remembered as the year Bitcoin truly became transactional and started transforming people’s financial lives,” said Mario Aguiluz, VP of Latin America (LATAM) at Ibex Mercado. “Pioneering exchanges like Tauros are delivering the future of bitcoin, today – and that’s sending shockwaves through the financial ecosystem.”

Mexico is rapidly entering the bitcoin space but historically has been held back from full-adoption due to fees and delivery time, according to the press release. This has largely left Bitcoiners in Mexico relying on the store-of-value use case, rather than using it as a viable form of currency. The partnership between IBEX and Tauros looks to change that.

“By harnessing Lightning to make Bitcoin transactions simple, seamless, affordable and inclusive, exchanges like Tauros are showing the way for banks and other financial institutions, who now can provide services to the four billion un- and under-banked people in the world,” Aguiluz continued. “As we saw at Bitcoin 2022, banks and other financial service providers are incredibly excited about the potential of Lightning.”

Filed Under: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Magazine, business, English, IBEX Mercado, lightning network, Mexico, News, Tauros

Synonym Launches Blocktank Service Provider For Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

29/04/2022 by Idelto Editor

The suite of open-source tools and services offered by Blocktank seeks to aid Lightning businesses provide a better experience for their customers.

Synonym Software has launched Blocktank, a new Lightning service provider (LSP) targeted at Lightning Network-based businesses interested in providing a better experience for their customers.

The suite of open-source tools and services offered by Blocktank promises to help wallets, applications, exchanges and merchants better navigate the requirements for sending and receiving effective and reliable payments on Bitcoin’s second-layer scaling network.

Blocktank is comprised of many different parts, including an application programming interface (API), a widget, and so-called hubs, all of which are open source across ten GitHub repositories.

Blocktank’s API allows businesses to integrate, automate and monetize aspects of their Lightning nodes, including purchasing, configuring and gathering data on their channels. For instance, bitcoin exchanges can use the tool to tap as much liquidity as they need to let their customers withdraw BTC instantly, encouraging self-custody.

Blocktank widgets caters to users interested in acquiring extra Lightning liquidity to buy channels quickly and effortlessly. After accessing the Blocktank website, the user only needs to configure their desired receiving capacity, spending balance, channel setup and duration. Then, the user is prompted to pay with bitcoin on-chain or on Lightning, after which they can claim the channel with LNURL or by manually providing their node information.

Companies can also leverage Blocktank widgets by embedding the customizable tool in any web-based platform.

Businesses can become a Blocktank Hub by running the Blocktank server themselves and joining Synonym’s Blocktank sub-network.

Hubs get special access to Synonym’s optimized and well-connected node infrastructure for automatic channel rebalancing through Tightrope, which enables trusted nodes to automatically recognize when a channel falls below a balance threshold and needs rebalancing. Blocktank Hubs also can purchase custom channels, automatically top-up their channels, and get access to a routing fee structure that diminishes the more volume they route through Synonym’s infrastructure.

Synonym launched last year with the goal to bring new utility and user experiences to Bitcoin and Lightning through open-source software.

Filed Under: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Magazine, Blocktank, business, English, lightning network, News, Synonym

Lightning Community Diamond Hands Partnership Seeks To Further Bitcoin Adoption In Asia

28/04/2022 by Idelto Editor

The Lightning Network community Diamond Hands partnered with ZEBEDEE and Mimesis Capital to further adoption in Asia through bitcoin gaming and education.

  • A Japanese Lightning Network community known as Diamond Hands has partnered with ZEBEDEE and Mimesis Capital to further Lightning adoption in Asia.
  • The bitcoin-only gaming company ZEBEDEE will use the partnership to build Lightning gaming infrastructure in the region.
  • Bitcoin-centric family office Mimesis Capital will work with Diamond Hands to consult and advise companies in the region hoping to adopt Lightning.

In a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine, Japanese Lightning Network community Diamond Hands is accelerating Lightning adoption via a partnership with bitcoin-only game developer ZEBEDEE and Mimesis Capital, a bitcoin-centric family office.

Diamond Hands will provide access to a large Bitcoin community in Japan for ZEBEDEE to establish infrastructure and serve as a local concierge for Japanese enterprises on behalf of both companies. Mimesis will work together with Diamond Hands in navigating the Lightning Network ecosystem and consulting with businesses in Asia who wish to adopt Lightning.

“The Diamond Hands community has played an integral role for Lightning adoption for both individuals and enterprises in Japan since last year, but we are looking to push this even further by collaborating with international companies and communities,” said Koji Higashi, co-organizer of Diamond Hands.

Christian Moss, co-founder and head of R&D at ZEBEDEE, noted the rich gaming culture and early bitcoin adoption in Japan contributed to the success of earlier Bitcoin games he had developed.

“I believe that once users in Asia also experience Lightning gaming for themselves then we will see an explosion of adoption and innovation in the region. With a ZEBEDEE/Diamond Hands partnership, we are one step closer to making this happen,” Moss stated in the release.

While ZEBEDEE builds gaming infrastructure for Asia with the help of Diamond Hands, Louis Liu, founder and CEO of Mimesis Capital looks to further business adoption in the region.

“I believe there is a lack of awareness of Lightning in Asia. There is a lot of room to improve. Through our partnership with Diamond Hands, we are able to provide education and consultation to local and international businesses based in Asia,” Liu said.

Diamond Hands operates one of the largest Lightning routing nodes on the market with 450 channels, with over 18 BTC valued at more than $720,000 USD, and distributes more than two million sats every month in a routing bonus program to eligible nodes.

Funding secured for Diamond Hands through new partnerships and sponsors will fund the routing bonus, the creation of educational content, and experimental Lightning projects.

“We’re very excited to help unlock Lightning’s true potential by working with new partners and looking for even more productive collaborations in the future as well,” Higashi concluded. 

Filed Under: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Magazine, business, Diamond Hands, English, lightning network, mimesis capital, News, zebedee

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