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The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

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101–110 of 448 posts

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

custodial ownership of bitcoins is a product of bitcoiners' defeatism: it only makes sense if you just want to make money and no longer care about the original values of bitcoin.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, please specify exact quantities, I did, it's the least you can do. > But sure, you can stick to the traditional monetary system where only a select few control the rules. No, a body accountable to Congress (the Fed) which publishes quarterly audits is responsible for the currency. They act on behalf of the American people. As opposed to an un-elected, un-accountable cluster of core contributors and mining pool…

You seem to have a very US centric worldview. Maybe ask some Turkish savers how they feel, or any number of endless examples worldwide where saving in their own government fiat isn’t a good idea.

The big question there is whether or not their government allows businesses to operate outside of their control. I doubt many Turks would risk jail time by using a system which provides their government with a full transaction history, especially given the volatility - if you converted lira into Bitcoin a year ago, you’d be about even with not doing anything. If you bought 6 months ago, you’d have 50% losses.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Payment channels were originally suggested by Satoshi. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Payment_channels

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#106
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Chris indeed pushes it hard, I think indeed too hard, I agree. But it's reducing and moving to other shows (like OfficeHours.hair). To him this is the response to centralization of podcasting and I see that. As a member (I do 8$ a month, supporting 1 show but listen to all) I also see the imbalance in the attention that 2ct boosts get. It will go 1 of 2 ways I guess: 1) Boosts become the main income and keep getting…

I stopped listening out of guilt bc I didn't want to use it.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#107
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?

Not a lawyer or accountant here but I think it would be reasonable to only treat the eventual on-chain withdraw as a taxable event. Until then, you have deposited some value in a number of lightening network nodes and have been negotiating a set of pairwise IOUs with them for later. DeFi/staking has a similar problem and I believe waiting until gains and losses are realized will be the way it goes down. For now, make…

> it would be reasonable to only treat the eventual on-chain withdraw as a taxable event

wouldn't that be an easy way to bypass taxes ? make all your transactions off-chain and just withdraw once a year ?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#108
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…

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Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#109
The problem I have with Lightning is it further validates the existence of Bitcoin - a decrepit and highly polluting technology which has at best has failed to achieve any of objectives in any meaningful way, and at worst recreated a financial system more exploitative and toxic than anything that came before it. Let it die already.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#110
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is being exchanged on the Lightning Network? LN transactions are simply 2-of-2 multisig transactions made on-chain, where both parties can change the balance amongst themselves, and where settlement is possible at any moment. Bitcoin isn't being used as money on-chain. Why is this controversial? Bitcoin is the equivalent of gold, which was the hardest form of money that is accepted worldwide, before…

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

This argument usually comes down to the "Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash" quote from the title.

I'd like to point out that the word "cash" is used differently in the cyberpunk community from before 2008. BCH and BSV both interpret it as "money used for every transaction" and thus advocate bigger blocks, while cypherpunks back in the day used it for "permissionless value tokens" (my phrasing here).

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