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The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

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Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#91

Post by kevinak »

ETH_start wrote: post #69

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 sto…

It’s worth pointing out that you can only see public channels on these trackers. Large players probably have large private channels open with each other to guarantee better payment flows and less fees.

Expedia, Steam and Microsoft not a likely reason cobnest ion got lowered. More likely exchanges and large players got better at handling their wallets.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#92

Post by acdha »

koheripbal wrote: post #74
TradingPlaces wrote: post #68

“We can make the blockchain actually work for payments if we take payments off the blockchain.” Sounds about right.

It's essentially a form of sharing, with lesser secure channels for less important transactions.

That’s not any normal definition of sharing. In the most flattering portrayal this is the equivalent of store accounts where you can make periodic large deposits to reduce transaction fees. Personally it seems more like an admission that the first decade of saying Bitcoin was suitable for use as a currency was in fact just as obviously wrong as critics said.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#93

Post by cowtools »

WinstonSmith84 wrote: post #89
tvink wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To quote the Bitcoin Whitepaper: >A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution It's fine that we've moved the goalpost as we've come to understand the limitations of this kind of blockchain, but it's also fine to highlight that "store of value that you can't directly transact with" was not what…

Quote to take maybe with a pinch of salt. Having been smart enough to invent Bitcoin, one could assume that Satoshi knew that waiting 10 minutes for a block time to be finalized along with a speed of 7tx/s was not going to be practical to go shopping ... regardless of tx fees. Something had to be invented, and this was just not there at the time of this whitepaper

Okay, so decrease block times or increase block sizes then. Satoshi was not afraid of hard forks.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#94

Post by librecoiner »

arcticbull wrote: post #16
lumannnn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone needs to open a Channel. There are custodial solutions already. You just need some Satoshis and are good to go. Likewise, not everyone needs to create their own Visa or MasterCard. They may have their MySQL/PostgreSQL implementation where they scale and allow for many TX/s. But they don't settle all these transactions in real time. That's also done on a different, slower layer.

Custodial solutions offer zero benefits over putting your money in a bank - and have a ton of drawbacks associated with Bitcoin people only overlook because of those benefits - and the L1 is so slow that any subset that wants to open a channel brings it to its knees. It's not a real solution. It's something coiners distract people with whenever someone points out the obvious and glaring flaws of the L1. [edit] To me…

I disagree. Custodial Lightning Bitcoin is still way better than a bank account.

- You can't open a bank account without KYC - You can send money without asking permission - You can receive money without asking permission - You can send money *privately* (onion layer) - You can send money around the globe faster - You can always take it on-chain on L1 via a submarine swap

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#95

Post by acdha »

exabyte wrote: post #67
joosters wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you have a feel for whether those orders are cryptocurrency workers or normal people who happen to prefer it to a credit card?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#96

Post by cowtools »

librecoiner wrote: post #94
arcticbull wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Custodial solutions offer zero benefits over putting your money in a bank - and have a ton of drawbacks associated with Bitcoin people only overlook because of those benefits - and the L1 is so slow that any subset that wants to open a channel brings it to its knees. It's not a real solution. It's something coiners distract people with whenever someone points out the obvious and glaring flaws of the L1. [edit] To me…

I disagree. Custodial Lightning Bitcoin is still way better than a bank account. - You can't open a bank account without KYC - You can send money without asking permission - You can receive money without asking permission - You can send money *privately* (onion layer) - You can send money around the globe faster - You can always take it on-chain on L1 via a submarine swap

Custodial bitcoins defeat the entire purpose of bitcoin. The fact that you don't understand that speaks volumes about the bitcoin community.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#97

Post by toolz »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #85
koheripbal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's essentially a form of sharing, with lesser secure channels for less important transactions.

You say “less important;” I say “vast majority.” How is this better than Visa or MC?

for one, the base currency in question is uncensorable. e.g. I for one find it detestable that fruits and nuts sellers in Iran suffer immensely because of US sanctions. The idea that innocent citizens are being made to suffer for their governments policy (especially in more authoritarian countries) is gross. I see it akin to punishing a child for their parents behavior.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#98

Post by acdha »

RileyJames wrote: post #58
Hamuko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is the equivalent of gold That definitely wasn't the original goal of Bitcoin though.

And surveillance capitalism wasn’t the original goal of the internet, yet here we are. What’s your point? A technology should achieve its founding goal or GTFO?

More that people who spend a decade dissembling about easily validated technical claims have a trust issue which is hard to reconcile with providing financial services. There were so many people selling this dream world where your life would be full of Bitcoin microtransactions who were unwilling to acknowledge that the system could not possibly scale to that level. Lightning is good for being potentially usable but I would not trust my assets to anyone who wasn’t saying something like it was necessary all along.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#99

Post by lawn »

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.

To get a pleasant experience today you also need to rely on third-parties to manage your channel, the very thing Bitcoin was set out to avoid.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#100

Post by librecoiner »

cowtools wrote: post #96
librecoiner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Custodial Lightning Bitcoin is still way better than a bank account. - You can't open a bank account without KYC - You can send money without asking permission - You can receive money without asking permission - You can send money *privately* (onion layer) - You can send money around the globe faster - You can always take it on-chain on L1 via a submarine swap

Custodial bitcoins defeat the entire purpose of bitcoin. The fact that you don't understand that speaks volumes about the bitcoin community.

I don't use Lightning. That doesn't prevent me from seeing how Custodial Lightning solutions like "BitcoinBeach" in ES are miles better than Banks.
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