1) You don't need trust the watch tower, they can't steel your money. 2) you can host a watch tower yourself on your server.
If a payment channel is still open, then the blockchain hasn't confirmed anything yet, the only speedup is to reduce roundtrips to the blockchain in the case of a series of transactions. So you are still limited by the speed of the blockchain, unless you decide to trust parties in the Lightning Network.
Let's pay tribute to the very first Hacker News thread about Bitcoin back in May, 2009 with this classic comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 > Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.
I mean, as soon as I read through the whitepaper I knew it was going to be valuable at least for a time. My primary reason for selling most of my Bitcoins at $200 a coin was that I thought it was obvious that the US would ban it. I made out like a bandit, don't get me wrong, but the fact that it's an accepted investment still boggles my mind. They shutdown eGold but not Bitcoin?! Crazypants. In retrospect, I think th…
I bought in late (at $79, so..) and not nearly enough because I knew eGold’s history as well. I then later lost some on btce. I suppose I should be happy that’s my biggest regret in life but this year in particular it really hurts every time I think of it. My business was hit hard by COVID and my wife and I started IVF after 3 years of trying.
It’s crazy how a bit of knowledge can drastically alter your life.
Tether is still a scam, and the music is still playing. Don't be the last guy. As for lightning, it adds a layer of trust into a system whose reason for existence is trustlessness. If you don't care about trustlessness, you can already have fast and scalable transactions through normal banking.
"you can already have fast and scalable transactions through normal banking." I see this repeated a lot. I think you're saying bitcoin is no better than normal banking for moving value. Do you really believe this? Yes, in the US I can immediately wire money somewhere as long as: 1) I do it within east coast business hours. Weekend? Sorry, wait til Monday 2) I have the correct information for the receiving institution…
It seems absurd that transfers between two accounts you own at large financial institutions take 3 days to process. There are obvious safety concerns, but there should be provably safe and faster ways of transferring value at minimal cost. People should be able to specify their security level; you could even gate-keep it with licensing, but we should make it an option for people.
I remember reading that the Lightning network can be attacked by people spamming it with withdrawal requests, resulting in funds being stolen from users. Furthermore, I remember reading that this attack is to some extent not solvable. I need to find a link. [EDIT: I think this might be it: https://decrypt.co/33917/bitcoin-stolen-lightning-network-at... .] I'm pro-Bitcoin, and I own some, but what worries me is whethe…
Gold isn't free to transport. Bitcoin shouldn't aim to be either. We don't want starbucks transactions in the same database as people saving for their pension. If you're transporting large amounts of money (digital gold) scaling isn't an issue.
Just a question, isn't all criticism against bitcoin applicable to gold? Money/Currency/Value in general can't be reduced or derived from first principles. You always have to take into account human nature, economic activity, and most unfortunately: psychology. So all criticism about how bitcoin inherently being pointless, sounds like off-tune. I want good reasons to/NOT-to buy in. First-world country citizens kind o…
In the age where we might see asteroid mining in our lifetimes, or possibly even economically transmuting elements, gold seems like a bad investment to me.
Let's pay tribute to the very first Hacker News thread about Bitcoin back in May, 2009 with this classic comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=599852 > Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency.
A decade latter and it's still a hobby currency. Price is not a sole indicator of faith in a currency.
There are vast amounts of professional drug dealers making their living from transactions using this “hobby currency”.
the energy consumption is my biggest criticism, so the answer is "no" (even though you try to sidestep that). buying a pack of gum with bitcoin could power a whole house for 2 months, that's awful and irresponsible.
How much energy do you think the current financial system consumes? Eg paying for a pack of gum with your Mastercard Edit: This wasn't intended to be a hypothetical- I agree BTC uses significantly more per transaction, but I'm curious how it compares to the entirety of a system like Mastercard divided by number of transactions (including all employee/office space/commute/etc energy consumption). There are clearer/few…