We since started accepting standard payment rails because, to be frank, the critical mass is not there yet. But it will come, since BTC is just a better method of payment, and in the long run it will show.

This is especially true in international settlements, where the traditional payment rails are antiquated and inadequate for even medium size transactions. Read: they might be OK for established multinationals but start ups pay the price of inefficient money transfers.

When Degoogled.com accepts fiat payments, it does still pay fees that are inherent to the way the fiat system works: transfer fees, inefficient exchange rates, sometimes multiple exchange losses on a single transaction, multiple delays in accessing the liquidity… the list goes on and on.

But we’re here to talk about bitcoin, the currency of the future.

Bitcoin, used in the way that Hydranode proposes, that is on the lightning network, eliminates the transaction fees. Well, the fees are not exactly zero, however they are fair, expressed already in the same currency being accepted, and somewhat adaptable.

Transactions are super-fast, and in this specific implementation by Hydranode they run over TOR 100% of the time making it for us that e value privacy a very valuable proposition.

About the Hydranode Installation

To install the BTCPay server terminal to our Shopify website we had to go through a bunch of steps.

In the past Shopify was great because all the payment gateways were added via an easy and intuitive API integration. Nowadays instead, Shopify operates some sort of whitelisting. If you want to add something like Coinbase, well, they’re whitelisted, so you just need to go to Settings > Payments > Add payment methods and ta-daa, you choose from the list and you’re done.

For BTCPay it’s a bit more complicated as the process will require you to “develop” a custom app. Shopify tries to “hide” this feature in a way, but it’s still there and this feature can be “unlocked” by going to Settings > Apps and sales channels > Develop apps.

There is an excellent article by BTCpayserver themselves that does all the explaining in details, so I don’t have to bore you here with the technicalities; if you too want to link your Hydranode to your Shopify see this: https://docs.btcpayserver.org/Shopify/

The guys at Hydranode are following step by step and helping with the integration; there’s literally a dedicated technicians that guides with the integration via Signal messanger.

Time it took to do the linking once everything (that is Shopify and the BTCpayserver instance) is ready to go? Half hour, tops!

Thank you to the guys at Hydranode for the product, I wish them a bright future ahead of them.