the Bitcoin Lightning Party in Portland

According to Clay Graham, founder of Rapaygo and Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN) enthusiast, there is “baseline evidence” that “America is adopting Bitcoin.”

At a Bitcoin Lightning Festival held in Portland, USA over the weekend, the Bitcoin LN made more than $200 (four million sats) in just three hours.

Hailed as “Puddle Town on Lightning Rails,” Portland’s bitcoin party was a place where “vendors, food trucks, and artists all accept bitcoin.” Graham told Cointelegraph that there was also a “food cart pod” that served as a “business attraction for bitcoin fans who want a bitcoin beach experience.”

Fiat money was of course not allowed, and popular bitcoiner Dennis Porter MC’d at the festival. In this tweet he showed how easy it is to pay for goods with LN:

I paid ZERO fees for adoption #Bitcoin immediately for my shirts. Can Visa do that? pic.twitter.com/34haSgIB6G

— Dennis Porter (@Dennis_Porter_) March 28, 2022

Graham told Cointelegraph that the event would be considered a success if “people could freely spend bitcoin like they would fiat.” In total there were:

“50 people doing over 4 million sats in 3 hours, 3 food trucks and 7 vendors selling whatever they want while even supporting use cases like ‘tipping the DJ’.”

Graham concluded that the LN made payments at the party a breeze: “Easier than cash, cheaper than cards for everything, and tons of fun on a sunny day.”

As a near-instantaneous Layer 2 payment network built on top of the Bitcoin base chain, the LN is ideal for a party environment. Pubinno, the company behind the Lightning Pour-a-Pint tool, is built specifically for festivals, while LNBits develops open source payment tools like split payment tools and offline solutions to make payment technology even smoother.

Tiago Vasconcelos, co-founder of Aceita Bitcoin and a contributor at LNBits FOSS, told Cointelegraph:

“With the LN, all you need is an internet connection! No card swipe hardware, no cash required, no currency exchange required [even] if the venue is international and with a lot of foreign people.”

LNBits’ free, open-source solutions built on top of the LN are in close competition with Visa and Mastercard. Vasconcelos adds that “network fees are close to zero or even zero and ultimately paid by the customer, not the merchant!” Additionally, “using LN reduces the cost and risk of using Visa or Mastercard.”

Ultimately, some bitcoiners are even interested in scammers learning about the LN, and for Graham:

“The LN is so fast and transactions can be processed as quickly and quickly as cards, so both the buyer and seller don’t feel ‘where has my money gone?’ when they’re just trying to have fun on a sunny day to have.”

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It’s also a payments network that supports “artists, people who made things with their own hands, and small businesses.” And there’s more of a local connection to the money – and more sovereignty – because for the Portland Bitcoin Party, “the nodes that routed payments for the LN will mostly be liquidated in Portland.”

Following Portland’s success, Graham added that “Kansas City has already tried to model this party” using his company’s solutions.

“Remember that within a year Bitcoin Beach El Salvador announced legal tender. Now we can have Bitcoin Beach in every city.”