US Rapper Lil Pump Starts Accepting Bitcoin via Lightning Network on Merchandise Store

Published at: April 25, 2019

American rapper Lil Pump has started accepting bitcoin (BTC) payments through his merchandise store Unhappy, according to his website.

Fans of the 18-year-old, known for his catchphrase “Esskeetit” and his most recent album Harverd Dropout, can select crypto as a payment option at the checkout. The rapper has 17.8 million followers on Instagram, 1.2 million followers on Twitter and 2.3 million likes on Facebook.

Shoppers can either choose to pay off-chain using a BTC Lightning Network wallet or on-chain through a standard bitcoin wallet. Selecting one of these options generates a QR code, which can then be scanned to complete the transaction.

The checkout platform is secured by OpenNode, which automatically converts BTC generated from transactions into the merchant’s local fiat currency to avoid volatility. The payment processing company’s website says the Lightning protocol delivers instant settlements and low fees for businesses.

This week, Lightning Labs announced the launch of their Lightning Network client for the main Bitcoin network, noting that it was still an early version aimed at developers.

More merchants have been starting to accept bitcoin in recent months, with many using payment companies that instantly convert cryptocurrencies into fiat.

On April 15, the UK’s biggest travel management firm announced that it is now giving its clients the option to pay for business bookings using BTC. Corporate Traveller, which is using BitPay to offer the service, said the move was in response to increasing demand.

Overstock.com, an online retail site, has been accepting bitcoin as payment since 2014.

Tags
Adoption
Bitcoin
Cryptocurrencies
Facebook
Twitter
Mainstream
Instagram
Related Posts
Online Sentiment Toward Crypto Market in 2019 — Attitudes Are Positive
Despite all of the bad press that the digital asset industry continues to receive on an almost daily basis, it appears as though the overall sentiment of the online communities in regard to this burgeoning domain is still pretty positive. For example, Comparitech — a research firm that provides its consumers with a host of specialized data that allows one to make more informed decisions — recently used a machine learning-based analysis tool to study more than 48K Reddit posts to determine which cryptocurrencies were viewed most favorably by the masses. Not only that, the study also took into consideration …
Adoption / Aug. 7, 2019
Fidelity-Backed Crypto Analytics Firm to Integrate Twitter-Based Crypto Sentiment Feed
Crypto analytics firm Coin Metrics partnered with Social Market Analytics (SMA) to collaborate on a feed of real-time sentiment towards cryptocurrency based on social media data, according to a press release on June 17. The new partnership intends to collect and analyze data posted by crypto community on social media in order to provide a new tool to help crypto traders to track social media sentiment data to build their portfolio strategies. The new product will initially target sentiment data solely on social media giant Twitter, Coin Metrics CEO Tim Rice confirmed to Cointelegraph, adding that the firms are currently …
Adoption / June 18, 2019
Facebook, Twitter and Telegram: A New Crypto Paradigm or a Glorified Voucher Program?
Facebook is controversial, if nothing else. The world's fifth-biggest company by market cap, it's also the biggest social network by a comfortable margin. Yet, despite the fact that most of us use it, we've become increasingly suspicious of what it's been doing with our personal data. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal (and probably long before), we've feared that such data isn't particularly secure or private, so we've been pushing back against the social media giant, as witnessed with last year’s #DeleteFacebook campaign. But at the same time, those with an interest in cryptocurrency also have an appreciation that, for …
Adoption / April 12, 2019
New Bot Enables Millions to Send and Receive Cryptocurrencies on Facebook Messenger
A company is giving Facebook users a way to securely send and receive crypto through Messenger — all while keeping sensitive information private. Lite.IM says its bot currently supports four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and its own native currency, ZTX. The company says it is “driven by a vision of what the world might look like if the founding ideals of the cryptocurrency revolution were actually realized” — a place where anyone can enjoy financial freedom irrespective of their technical skills or the region of the world where they reside. A presence on Facebook Messenger is the latest milestone for …
Adoption / Jan. 9, 2019
Unconfirmed: TRON to Partner with ‘China’s Google,’ Baidu
The team of cryptocurrency project TRON (TRX) has reportedly partnered with China's largest Internet search provider Baidu. Crypto market news service Coinness has claimed this in a tweet Thursday, Oct. 11, citing its private correspondence with TRON’s team. Neither TRON nor Baidu have been able to confirm the partnership to Cointelegraph as of press time. Without specifying the details of the partnership, Coinness has claimed that the deal between TRON and China’s Internet giant Baidu will be “officially” revealed by the cloud storage service Baidu Cloud “next week.” While Coinness claims that TRON has exclusively confirmed the partnership in private …
Adoption / Oct. 13, 2018