Alther on Nostr: BCH might be more interesting for settlement than we’ve been giving it credit for. ...

BCH might be more interesting for settlement than we’ve been giving it credit for.

For years, Bitcoin Cash has often been positioned as:

«“Bitcoin that works well for everyday payments.”»

That narrative isn’t wrong.

But it may be too narrow.

Because there’s a difference between payment and settlement.

Payment is when I buy a $3 coffee.

Settlement is when two parties clear and fulfill a financial obligation between them.

And this is where BCH becomes interesting.

Imagine a business receiving payments through multiple channels:

• cards
• banks
• e-wallets
• payment processors
• stablecoins
• cryptocurrencies

Eventually, all those incoming funds need to be settled and transferred to whoever is entitled to them.

Settlement requires several things:

reliable finality, low fees, the ability to transfer value globally, and independence from traditional banking hours.

BCH has characteristics that make it interesting to experiment with models like this.

And there’s something that often gets overlooked.

Settlement doesn’t have to mean billion-dollar transactions.

A platform could perform thousands of small settlements.

Merchant → payment processor.

Payment processor → merchant.

Marketplace → seller.

Platform → creator.

Company → supplier.

Exchange → user.

Even machine → software.

If settlement costs are extremely low, the economic threshold for settling also becomes lower.

And when the cost of settlement falls, the frequency of settlement can increase.

That’s interesting.

Because traditional systems often batch obligations together before settling them in order to reduce costs.

Cheap blockchains open up the possibility of settling more frequently.

Not:

“We’ll settle later because it’s expensive.”

But:

“Why not settle now?”

This is where BCH can be viewed from a different perspective.

Not just:

“Can BCH be used to buy coffee?”

But:

“Can BCH become one of the rails used to settle economic obligations?”

That’s a much bigger question.

And interestingly, BCH doesn’t need to replace the banking system for this thesis to make sense.

It only needs to become one useful settlement rail when someone needs to move value cheaply, globally, and without relying on a single operator.

So perhaps we’ve been focusing too much on the question:

“How many people are buying coffee with BCH?”

When the more interesting question might be:

“How much value can be settled using BCH without requiring an entirely different financial system?”

BCH doesn’t have to become the money people use to buy everything.

It could become infrastructure quietly settling transactions in the background.

And if that happens,

BCH would no longer be just “everyday money.”

It would become a settlement layer.

#BCH #BitcoinCash