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The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

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Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#151

Post by olalonde »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #129
victorvosk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC and a lot of other chains are Level 1 (L1). Final settlement layers for transactions. To compare that to normal banking, your credit card is like an L5. Tons of things go on in-between your CC transactions before its actually settled even if it appears to be instant and final to the end user. Truth is crypto enthusiasts have been overly ambition in this space, insisting a single L1 chain will come along and be th…

How is this better than Visa and MC?

Visa and MC could be L5 networks for Bitcoin, why not? Lightning is lower level and more decentralized, but it doesn't solve issues like dispute arbitration which credit cards do.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#152

Post by bendtheblock »

varajelle wrote: post #146
TradingPlaces wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this better than Visa and MC?

It keeps many of the properties of bitcoin: - decentralised - trustless - censure resistance Edit: - pseudonymous

but what's the benefit of these?

- decentralised: why is this good?

- trustless: I trust the companies I use, it works

- censure resistance: OK, fringe case for most

- pseudonymous: why do I want anyone to be able to see my transaction history?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#153

Post by shudza »

simiones wrote: post #78
shudza wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some interesting points. IMHO, LN is far from THE solution. But it will help merchant adoption, more than end-user though. The fact is, most people would/will probably use custodial LN wallets, which is against some "crypto" postulates, and comes down to well known MySQL argument. The difference is MySQL on Bitcoin vs MySQL on USD (Paypal). As we will see in the coming months, fiat itself is a lot like a MySQL. So I…

> So I would argue that there is nothing wrong with MySQL on Bitcoin, and in fact, is an upgrade on fiat. The fact that the USD didn't lose ~50% of its value in the last few months suggests the pro vs con is more mixed.

Well 'scuse me, Mr Privileged. Countries which are not US do in fact exist, and are not using USD. Check some other CBCs YoY against USD, and tell me how much they lost on average.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#154

Post by Imnimo »

toolz wrote: post #115
_mhr_ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by uncensorable? What does censorship have to do with sanctions hurting innocent economic participants?

if you sanction Iran, limiting their fruit sellers, you have to have means to track the trades in order to enforce those sanctions - lightening network is effectively untraceable at the moment (and tools built on top of bitcoin can make tracing payments provably impossible) which means the sanctions can't be easily enforced - no country is going to spend resources proving their businesses aren't doing fruit trades wi…

What has stopped the fruit sellers from using bitcoin to avoid sanctions for the past five years?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#155

Post by toolz »

Imnimo wrote: post #154
toolz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you sanction Iran, limiting their fruit sellers, you have to have means to track the trades in order to enforce those sanctions - lightening network is effectively untraceable at the moment (and tools built on top of bitcoin can make tracing payments provably impossible) which means the sanctions can't be easily enforced - no country is going to spend resources proving their businesses aren't doing fruit trades wi…

What has stopped the fruit sellers from using bitcoin to avoid sanctions for the past five years?

It hasn't stopped them or anyone else, people have been using bitcoin to bypass censorship for years.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#156

Post by arcticbull »

shudza wrote: post #153
simiones wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I would argue that there is nothing wrong with MySQL on Bitcoin, and in fact, is an upgrade on fiat. The fact that the USD didn't lose ~50% of its value in the last few months suggests the pro vs con is more mixed.

Well 'scuse me, Mr Privileged. Countries which are not US do in fact exist, and are not using USD. Check some other CBCs YoY against USD, and tell me how much they lost on average.

So they have access to USDC. I love how people pull out the privilege card the second you suggest that a so-called currency that loses 70% of its value in a year (BTC) might not be that good for poor folks.

True privilege is being able to lose 70% of your net currency value in a single year without being on the street and advocating for it even after. For everyone else, there are better choices.

I suspect somewhere along the bull run you lost perspective.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#158

Post by toolz »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #139
toolz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Evading laws is the killer app of Bitcoin.” You will get no argument from me on that

It was illegal to protect jews from being enslaved and murdered not too long ago. Evading the law is exactly why it's important and it is the ethically superior position to support tools that enable people to bypass unethical laws.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#159

Post by max51 »

once_inc wrote: post #110
Hamuko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

The people using the intro of the whitepaper to justify BCH are also conveniently ignoring half the paper and pretends that entire technical sections are irrelevant and should be ignored.

Ironically, trying to prove which chain is the "real" bitcoin by interpreting word from the introduction of the paper goes directly against the almost everything that is written in the rest of the paper.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#160

Post by toolz »

admax88qqq wrote: post #142
toolz wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you sanction Iran, limiting their fruit sellers, you have to have means to track the trades in order to enforce those sanctions - lightening network is effectively untraceable at the moment (and tools built on top of bitcoin can make tracing payments provably impossible) which means the sanctions can't be easily enforced - no country is going to spend resources proving their businesses aren't doing fruit trades wi…

I don't think it's as hard as you think to track ships. They're all tracked already Government will adapt and just ban shipping vessels from visiting sanctioned countries, or create a vast make work agency to inspect cargo on ships that visited sanctioned countries.

and who is going to track those ships? The sanctioning country doesn't have the jurisdiction and likely doesn't have the resources to logistically stop it. The countries benefiting from the trade (both sanctioned and allied nations) have every incentive to allow the trade to happen if it can happen without detection - so who is going to stop it?
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