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The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

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Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#61

Post by gikrauss »

FabHK wrote: post #56
teekert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on the receiving end, but to me this seems like the law is behind reality. Micropayments are coming, perhaps using blockchain, perhaps not, probably in a number of different ways. I guess this is a good question for the hosts of the podcasts that use these features (Like Linux Unplugged, and other shows from Jupiter Broadcasting or the No Agenda show by Adam Curry and John Dvorak.) Perhaps this is not answere…

> Micropayments are coming, perhaps using blockchain Blockchain is remarkably ill-suited for micropayments.

L2 solutions are proving that this is not quite true.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#62

Post by dopidopHN »

FabHK wrote: post #56
teekert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on the receiving end, but to me this seems like the law is behind reality. Micropayments are coming, perhaps using blockchain, perhaps not, probably in a number of different ways. I guess this is a good question for the hosts of the podcasts that use these features (Like Linux Unplugged, and other shows from Jupiter Broadcasting or the No Agenda show by Adam Curry and John Dvorak.) Perhaps this is not answere…

> Micropayments are coming, perhaps using blockchain Blockchain is remarkably ill-suited for micropayments.

Oh god yes. I manage block chain nodes those days. We build some type of wallet. Those things works. But the pain is fresh

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#63

Post by Grumbledour »

teekert wrote: post #5

A cool use of the Lightning network is the podcast 2.0 initative. Currently, as I listen to podcasts, I stream back satoshis (sats), value for value (I use Castamatic on iOS, fountain.fm is also an option on Android). You can also send messages with sats attached, called “boosts”. Creators can transparantly split the sats they receive over various goals (i.e. FOSS projects [opensats], or guests on shows). There are n…

I really dislike this whole initiative and much prefer the patreon model.

One reason of course might be that i am listening to Jupiter Broadcast and Chris pushes this stuff hard, really annoying me with the constant talk about lightning and especially the boosts, which seem to take over half the show, because somehow he seems not to realize that the problem he has in getting regular supporters is the insane price he asks (last i looked about $2,50 per episode), but likes to give everyone several minutes of the show who sent him 20 cents.

But I think my misgivings go further than that and i am especially concerned about this taking over podcasts or even open source, because while I do understand that people need to eat, I think these two ecosystems especially thrive because so many people contribute to them without profit being their first motive. I would not ask people to do work for free, but I often find that that when profit comes into it, quality starts to suffer and ideals get lost.

Sure, lightning is in some ways similar to patreon etc. because it might still be user financed, but I feel the unpredictability of getting funds, the more attention focused model, will have similar effects on creators than other platforms with similar models do and I am mostly not fond of this.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#64

Post by samatman »

FabHK wrote: post #56
teekert wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on the receiving end, but to me this seems like the law is behind reality. Micropayments are coming, perhaps using blockchain, perhaps not, probably in a number of different ways. I guess this is a good question for the hosts of the podcasts that use these features (Like Linux Unplugged, and other shows from Jupiter Broadcasting or the No Agenda show by Adam Curry and John Dvorak.) Perhaps this is not answere…

> Micropayments are coming, perhaps using blockchain Blockchain is remarkably ill-suited for micropayments.

Untrue both in general and in particular.

Most blockchains are worthless and have nothing in the way of transaction fees or indeed transactions. Doge is perfect for micropayments! This was a fad on reddit back in the day.

In particular, well, the title of the article says it all. If you have BTC, and you want to send a few sats and pay basically nothing, Lighting has existed for years and works just fine.

Edit: I don't think micropayments are such a great idea to begin with, but the arguments for that have nothing to do with the medium of payment: assuming a perfect micropayment system, people still won't want to use it for off-topic reasons.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#65

Post by dopidopHN »

londons_explore wrote: post #34
TekMol wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you handle the tax implications of streaming sats? As far as I know, every payment with Bitcoin triggers a taxable event? Do you record a gazillion log entrys "Paid $0.0000145 for listening podcasts, Paid $0.000142 for listening podcasts ...", crunch all the numbers and then at the end of the year put that gigantic list into your tax declaration?

Software can do it all for you. Not my problem that the IRS can't handle my 10 million page tax return...

It’s anoying for me. I remember living in place where doing my taxes was taking 15min total. Here, without third party software it’s a challenge

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#66

Post by ETH_start »

FabHK wrote: post #39
tromp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by reducing fees, the LN reduces the incentive for Bitcoin miners to use large amounts of computing power That's great for the environment, but in the long term of vanishing block subsidies, not so great for Bitcoin's security, as the costs of 51% or censorship attacks also decrease.

Fees have constituted just 1% to 2% of mining revenue over the last year (the other 99% being the mining reward ("coinbase") of 6.25 BTC per block). So, LN does not reduce the incentive for Bitcoin miners in any meaningful way, unless I'm mistaken.

The mining reward declines geometrically, with a halvening every four years.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#67

Post by exabyte »

joosters wrote: post #46
once_inc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is being actively used daily by a vast community of users. I don't understand what you are trying to imply with your statement.

The 'reference' implementation of the protocol, https://github.com/lightningnetwork/lnd is still in beta, with warnings about how users could lose all their money. AFAIK, there's no stable/reliable software out there. And don't forget, ordinary users need to monitor the blockchain 24/7 in order not to lose their money by a counterparty closing their channel fraudulently. It's far from ready for use.

We use it at a cafe and receive several orders a day with people paying by lightning

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#69

Post by ETH_start »

LN adoption/capacity cannot possibly explain the reduction in Bitcoin congestion.

At its peak, there was only $200 million worth of BTC as collateral in LN channels:

https://www.defipulse.com/address-tag/lightning-network

This is against an ATH market cap of $1.25 trillion. LN collateral isn't even a rounding error relative to outstanding BTC.

The much more likely explanation for reduced congestion is that people stopped using BTC as money, as major merchants like Expedia, Microsoft and Steam stopped accepting it.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#70

Post by saalweachter »

arcticbull wrote: post #9

Lightning is a solution that does not do what it says on the tin. It requires an on-chain transaction to open a channel, which at current block size limits requires about 75 years for everyone on earth to have one, and somewhere in the trillion dollar range in fees and the entire outstanding block reward. Factor in quadratic routing complexity, and even if you did onboard everyone it wouldn't work anyways. This is as…

> The only scaling solution is MySQL, just like the Bastion of Bitcoin, El Salvador is doing. Always was.

I don't know why the internet thinks they can convince the world to use a new/better currency when they can't even make anyone switch off MySQL.

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