Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

papers.ssrn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 448 posts

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#211

Post by TradingPlaces »

olalonde wrote: post #143
TradingPlaces wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Blockchain is better because non-blockchain payment systems don’t even have a blockchain."

That's almost the opposite of what I said. My whole point was that it's possible to use non-blockchain payment systems (e.g. Lightning) to transact in Bitcoin while still reaping many of its benefits. I guess if you wanted to sarcastically quote me, you should have gone with "Bitcoin is better because fiat currencies don’t even have a blockchain." (a statement I agree with).

Why is blockchain better than a centralized database for the end user? What specific advantages does it offer to me when I go to 7-11 and buy a Slurpee with my watch, which is how I do it now?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#212

Post by toolz »

ABeeSea wrote: post #175
toolz wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have to be smuggled out of Iran - Iran explicitly wants to enable that trade. Who inside of Iran are they smuggling the fruits away from?

They have to be smuggled INTO another country. One that has applied sanctions and doesn’t want Iran’s fruits and nuts. Violating import laws especially for agricultural products is a big deal.

no country _wants_ to reduce trade - they simply accept that sanctions are necessary. Reducing trade necessarily hurts both countries, and there aren't likely to be any functioning developed countries that want to act against their own interests. As such, it's not at all hard to imagine the receivers having a hard time enforcing sanctions. After all, with all the problems a country has - why would they dedicate time and resources to purposefully hurt their own?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#213

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

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…

Market Cap and volume don't need to correlate. Your line of reasoning is a red herring.

BTC as a store of value can have a very low volume and those LN could be responsible for an inordinant amount of volume, with low collateral depending on how fast the trades are.

With OTC, Wrapped versions, and leverage through sythetix its also an impossible task to be able to claim for certainty anyways.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#214

Post by preseinger »

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

KYC is good, not bad.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#215

Post by lxgr »

simonmales wrote: post #201
shmatt wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like 99% of crypto projects, this would work just as well under a centralized db / FIAT

Not exactly. Lightning means they receiver gets 100% what I send. This is particularly interesting for micropayments. I can tip someone 1 cent, or less with no middle man.

What's the incentive for anybody to open a lightning channel, providing connetivity etc. without compensation?

And even if all of this was indeed done for free (sustainably, not as a loss leader): Dispute resolution and fraud costs money. Free leaves zero margin for either, and I wouldn't use a payment service not providing both.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#216

Post by noch »

shmatt wrote: post #209
simonmales wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Lightning means they receiver gets 100% what I send. This is particularly interesting for micropayments. I can tip someone 1 cent, or less with no middle man.

the fact you are using the lightning network means there is some thing writing down a transaction from wallet a to wallet b smart contracts are a middle man, and not a great one from all the recent exploits executed on them

> the fact you are using the lightning network means there is some thing writing down a transaction from wallet a to wallet b

Correction: Lightning is a peer-to-peer payment network https://docs.lightning.engineering/the-lightning-network/pay...

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#217

Post by rewtraw »

shmatt wrote: post #195
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…

Like 99% of crypto projects, this would work just as well under a centralized db / FIAT

I'm consistently surprised by HN's lack of vision in this area. The idea of a Network State / Internet-native economy is a cyberpunk dream, and crypto enables that. The constant doubt, rejection, and preference for SV-startup solutions is the opposite of what I would expect from a "Hacker Community" but I suppose HN is literally full of VCs (particularly FinTech) that don't want the competition from open crypto solutions.

Meanwhile, devs in crypto are able to build without limits and are having an absolute blast larping as anime cats on Twitter while cranking on bleeding edge ZK tech and other exciting projects.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#218

Post by RedNifre »

cowtools wrote: post #90
protonbob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of those circumstances where you just don't tell the IRS. Just like running a garage sale or a lemonade stand.

lemonade stands do not keep an easily accessible eternal log of their payments

Lightning channels don't either, only the settled transaction in the end gets written back to the block chain.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#219

Post by samatman »

hnthrow1010 wrote: post #132
samatman wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The existence of Lightning is a failure of Bitcoin's designers to create a system that can scale well, they instead chose to focus on something that was going to be maximum profitable for the miners in the short term and dumped responsibility off onto "L2 chains" as a kludge. The Lightning Network also doesn't "work just fine", the network is fundamentally slow, insecure and unreliable and this will likely never be f…

I'm only replying to say that, for all I know, you're correct in all of this. I don't think so, but that's a weakly held conviction about an entire ecosystem I don't use and understand only vaguely.

The fact that I personally know people keeping hundreds of thousands of dollar-equivalent-sats on Lightning, who are happy with that arrangement, is what I'm balancing against that guy on the internet with strong opinions with 'throw' in his name.

But hey maybe you know what you're talking about. It's possible. I don't.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#220

Post by pessimizer »

kordlessagain wrote: post #112
JofArnold wrote: post #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.

So you blame Lightning not for what it is, but what it enables? That doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given the creators built it to address the issues you raise here. With Lightning, micropayments for the Web can be a thing. Just because nobody has implemented it yet, doesn't mean it doesn't have a killer use case worth the cost of mining (which will decrease over a long period of time). Moving payments for A…

It doesn't make sense to blame Lightning for enabling Bitcoin, it only makes sense to praise Lightning for enabling Bitcoin?
Post reply on HN