December 6, 2022 — A Bitcoin supporter on the social media website Twitter under the account name of ShireHodl, or Shire for short, dispatched more than 110 micro-payments to first-time users of Bitcoin Lightning in reaction to Michael Saylor’s Lightning Network pool.
Shire requested that those who were new to Lightning download and install a Lightning wallet from either the App Store or Google Play Store and then submit a QR invoice to him. In order to pay the submitted invoice, Shire scanned the QR code with his camera, after which the Bitcoin Lightning Network took care of the rest. In a Tweet, Shire claimed that he would send out 1000 sats to as many individuals as possible before falling asleep.
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Shire claimed that he had “sent out about 110 payments of 1000 sats.” Sats are shorthand for Satoshis, or the smallest possible denomination of a Bitcoin. There are exactly 100 million Satoshis in a single Bitcoin. Shire added:
“It’s not much, maybe $20 in total, but the total fee is less than a penny. Using a credit card or debit card, the fees would have been more than the value transferred, so it would have been impossible.”
In total, Shire transferred more than 110 micropayments, effectively adding 110 brand new users to the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The businessman helped spread the word about Bitcoin’s Lightning Network because he realized that many BTC users had not used the network before.
Chairman of Microstrategy, Michael Saylor, polled over 60,000 people to ask if they had used Bitcoin Lightning. The results of the poll prompted Shire into action. Speaking with Cointelegraph Shire said:
“60% of respondents in his poll said they have never used a lightning wallet, so this was a small incentive to give it a go.” Adding “Also, I knew the fees would be minuscule and that people taking part would be all over the world, demonstrating how LN is borderless and will enable micropayments for all kinds of future applications.”
Shire added that his experiment and attempt at onboarding only works when using Bitcoin:
“This can’t be done with shitcoins either. Fees are higher, settlement takes longer. You need instant settlement on an asset with deep liquidity to be able to scale this to the world and its applications. Only Bitcoin is capable of fulfilling this role.”
Shire plans to press on with sending sats via the Lightning Network in hopes of demonstrating that Bitcoin may become a global currency in the future.