Wait a second, so we don't have to hold or own any bitcoins and we can pay our bills in BTC? That means our fiat will be used to buy BTC, and then it will be sent to the receiver's side on-chain and probably into their Cash App. Haha, well, I haven't heard a better way to summarize this paradox.

This is not adoption, it's just basic conversion. But if someone really holds fiat in this app, why do they even have to use BTC as a payment option? The BTC payment option is for Bitcoin holders. I always wanted to pay my electricity bills in Bitcoin, but I don't want to because that would be like telling them I own Bitcoin. With these increasing breaches, the next thing these hackers will be doing is attacking those authorities to get all the data about us and where we live haha. No thanks.

It would have been great if you had included a source for this because I couldn’t find any information about it. This would be a useful product for so many people and I could see CashApp or Square introducing this feature some time in the future. Yes, it might be a custodial payment app, but that doesn’t mean you have to hold your Bitcoin inside CashApp all the time. Just long enough to complete your payment would be enough.

It would be better if there was no centralized intermediary, but most service providers are never going to accept Bitcoin directly if we’re being realistic.

That's not control but a purpose. In El Salvador, it's a legal tender so they also pay their bills in bitcoin. But those companies doesn't have a way to control Bitcoin. What we see here is the use case of bitcoin and the usefulness of it that it's not just an asset to hold for a long time but, we can use it just like the regular cash that we pay for our things. Don't make yourself confused with it and the things to be complicated because from the very start, this is what satoshi wants and that's to be a peer to peer transaction and that involves using bitcoin as payment.

You are right that some businesses or people pay bills with Bitcoin in El Salvador. But the law that made Bitcoin a legal tender in El Salvador was amended in 2025. Now, Businesses are not under any obligation to accept Bitcoin as payment for goods and services. There are some reasons why the use of Bitcoin as a currency is not popular. Government policies and price volatility are some of them. Investors now prefer to hodl it and make a profit when the price appreciates. Hopefully,  BTC will become less volatile in the future, as there are indications that it could become stable.

Maybe, he is referring to third-party services that act as a medium for transactions between buyers and sellers. Furthermore, maybe he is also referring to sellers of goods or services that accept Bitcoin. Of course, buyers who spend money still need to own Bitcoin to make transactions, but sellers and third-party services don't need to own it. Cmiiw.

Thanks bro, I thought that it's still a legal tender there. I've just confirmed and did a research about it and you're right. I think that I've missed this news last year, I haven't seen any news about it or I was too busy on other things at that time.

Yes, I just saw some articles about it. Thanks to both of you, it's no longer mandated by law in El Salvador that bitcoin should be used as a legal tender and means of payment. I guess that Bukele did his job in introducing it to his countrymen and to the world that it's possible. Just like people there who used to pay bills in bitcoin, we also did that here in the Philippines because of coins.ph that allowed us to. They have the bills payment option long time ago and they have removed it, but now it's back on the app although it has to be converted first in our local fiat unlike before it can be done directly from the balance of their btc wallet.

Trying to guess their intent is a fool's errand imo. We can only see what they're doing with how they structure the KYC and stuffs like that. I'm not sure control is the right word either since you're the one who decide whether you should use apps or straight up spend your sats from your wallet to the merchants of your liking. I'm sure we'll see more merchants accepting Bitcoin through various payment gateways. Some of them probably require KYC since it relies on a 3rd party, but those focused on privacy and control probably won't look at them at all.

The question is whether using Bitcoin as payment method is illegal or not. I'm sure many would happily add crypto payment gateway if the government allowed them to do so. CMIIW.

Cash app is region locked to united states and crypto payment in united state is legal, even FinCEN treat merchant payment acceptance for goods or services as not a money transmitter.

Cash app itself is a money transmitter but they already licensed across all the states and allowed to offer bitcoin payments.

That aside, bitcoin payment in the united states is quite common thing, tons of companies did it before cash app.

Forgive me but I am a bit lost here, how does a person use or pay bills using bitcoin without actually owning bitcoin? Is it that the person makes payment in fiat or any other means and the system auto converts the funds into bitcoin or how does this work? I would appreciate more explanation on this.

It's actually a win for bitcoin if major bill payment apps integrates bitcoin and make it an integral part of their payment options, if this gets adopted  and the bitcoin network starts seeing hundreds of millions of transactions every day, this won't be a win for bitcoin alone, it would also be a big win for both the bitcoin miners and the community at large.
But I don't see how anyone can transact/pay bills in bitcoin without directly or indirectly owning/holding bitcoin.