The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money • Hacker News Board

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#381

Post by imtringued » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #210

Aaronstotle wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is not fungible and because of its hard cap does not incentive actual use as a means of exchange. I'll never understand why BTC Maximalists refuse to acknowledge faults in BTC and see how other currencies can solve them.

> its hard cap does not incentive actual use as a means of exchange. Why? Is that because it's has 'Scarcity'? People will pay more for it in the future? If that case is so soundly put why would you not buy as much btc as possible? Playing a bit of devils advocate here but wouldn't you say that it's volitility leads to more trading? Means of exchange need to be further defined in this crazy overfinancialized world we…

>Is that because it's has 'Scarcity'? People will pay more for it in the future?

What did they do to deserve that? Watch everyone else create the wealth they take for granted?

>If that case is so soundly put why would you not buy as much btc as possible?

Because most people barely have enough money for their basic needs as they have to pay interest to financial capitalists and ground rent to land owners. They have no surplus to speak of that they could possibly spend on a deflationary currency. They are the losers of this system even though they are the ones who are doing the work.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#382

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #285

teekert wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for me. This issue in particular seems to polarize our community.

"our community" is one that wouldn't know how to get to the bowling lanes if Uber went down. Hell, half of us probably wouldn't know how to get work done if Slack or Github has an afternoon outage. There's not a person on this site that would last in a cyberpunk distopia, putting the average HN user in the middle of an unmoderated forum would be like the end of Logan's Run. We'd all be standing around, stupefied by a…

> The average person is a weenie, and we rely on a great deal of well-maintained, centralized infrastructure to keep us going.

All these crypto bros are the same. They would't survive a day if their vision of the future actually came to be.

Also see all the "crypto bros flock to centralised trusted courts to try and get their money back after yet another crypto scam":

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=coinflex-sues-roger-ver-to-...

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=hypernet-labs-shuts-down-sh...

- https://web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=former-asset-manager-for-ce...

etc.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#383

Post by imtringued » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

cardimart wrote: post #244

Aaronstotle wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll use my own example, I purchased a month of a VPN service using BTC when it was ~11k, it's about $5 in fiat per month. If you believe BTC will only go up, I don't see why you would want to spend it if your money will be worth more if you wait. Regarding Volatility, yes it leads to a lot of trading, I mean means of exchange as purchasing everyday goods. The transaction history of BTC also adds regulatory hurdles.

So if every grocery was to be priced in BTC, you wouldn't eat? :) Remember that the US was on the gold standard with a similar inflation profile to Bitcoin and consumers were consuming.

>So if every grocery was to be priced in BTC, you wouldn't eat? :)

Yes, people didn't eat much during the great depression, they had no money to buy more food even though there was enough to eat for everyone. How hard is it to comprehend that if you are unemployed you can't afford food?

If BTC results in unemployment then a lot of people are going to end up hungry.

>Remember that the US was on the gold standard with a similar inflation profile to Bitcoin and consumers were consuming.

We also had two economic depressions that lead to two world wars.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#384

Post by woojoo666 » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 10:22 AM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #356

woojoo666 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean by your question. Payers choose the channel they want to send the payment over. If somebody sets a large fee, the payers will simply choose a different channel.

By that logic, if customers would see how large interchange fees can be, they would choose different payment methods than the most expensive credit cards. The opposite is the case: Merchants almost always prefer not losing the purchase over a few bips saved on interchange and cardholders continue using their high-fee cards because issuers pay them kickbacks from that interchange in the form of rewards. The exact same…

The difference between Lightning channels and credit cards, is it's much harder to create a competing credit card company than it is to spin up a new Lightning channel. And it's also more difficult for customers to get new credit cards vs switch payment channels. So, if a bank or credit card company wanted to extort certain merchants, eg saying "pay me a big fee or I will reject all payments to you", they can do so, since they know many customers are tied to their card and the merchant risks losing those customers. On the other hand if some lightning channel tried to extort merchants, both the merchant and the customer can easily switch channels to dodge fees.

This is one of the main goals of crypto. By drastically lowering the barrier to entry, competition is higher and fees are lower. This is what filecoin is doing to AWS [1], what NFT tickets are doing to Ticketmaster [2], and what Lightning is doing to credit card companies.

[1]: https://file.app/

[2]: https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/web3-touring-ticketing...

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#385

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

bytelines wrote: post #208

dmitriid wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 1.5-3.5% credit card processing fee for starters. Compared to... 1 dollar, no, 15 dollars, no, 5 dollars, no, 65 dollars, no, ... transaction fees for Bitcoin.

That creates opprotunities for other Level 1 chains. Solana for example charges $0.00025 per transaction (however this is still denominated in the SOL currency so it will fluctuate). Hedera network is $0.0001 per transaction and is fixed in USD.

They have other problems. Solana's entire supply is said to be 5% of the current world population. I'll let you do the math on the rich/poor inequality this entails.

Each problem that's dismissed out of hand by crypto proponents is compounded by the endless streams of bigger and worse problems.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#386

Post by tim333 » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 10:46 AM UTC

kkielhofner wrote: post #289

When will the blockchain ecosystem provide something with that "WOW I need this in my life right now" factor to the average user? Google went from a research project to incorporated and usable on the internet in roughly two years with a total investment of about $2mm in 2022 money. Let's just say the pace of innovation had some serious roadblocks at the time (they literally had to build their own servers and host the…

> The "WOW I need this in my life right now" factor is making money through the price of the assets going up. Which you may say is ponzi but the majority of the UK economy seems people making money through assets (housing mostly) going up. I can see younger people saying I can't afford a house but maybe I'll buy some bitcoin or similar maybe that will go up.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#387

Post by simiones » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 12:06 PM UTC

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.

Let's look then at the Turkish Lira, which had a massive fall because of crazy monetary policy and other problems. It now stands at 0.057 USD, compared to the most typical value of 0.11 USD in 2021 - it has retained ~52% of its value. In contrast, BTC stands at 20k USD, compared to its mean value in 2021 of 47k USD - it only retained 42% of that value.

So, someone who had put all of their savings in Turkish Lira would be better off today than someone who did so in BTC (and if we're comparing to the peaks for each year, it gets even worse - they would be left with only 39% for TRY, 29% for BTC).

Are there even worse currencies than the TRY? Probably. But the vast majority are actually doing much better, and even the TRY beat BTC as a store of value.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#388

Post by JofArnold » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 12:08 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #168

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.

If you prefer, there are LN-like systems that run with other L1 chains.

Indeed. And I'm very interested in the core tech as I say elsewhere; for instance I've written my own ZK rollups for Ethereum as a project to better understand the tech. There's some bits and pieces on my GitHub if you're into that kind of thing.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#389

Post by JofArnold » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 12:22 PM UTC

kordlessagain wrote: post #261

JofArnold wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. If you're going to build something like this, why on top of Bitcoin which - as I say - is rotten to its core. With Ethereum and its L2s instant, practically-free micropayments are already a thing. With Solana even... and others I'm not particularly in to but I hear work to various degrees. To be clear, the tech itself is interesting and broadly I remain fascinated in blockchain technologies and engaged with…

The authors of the Lightning paper were well aware of the cost of Bitcoin mining to the environment. We (the authors and myself) speculated at the time that energy usage of Bitcoin mining could one day exceed the current output in the energy markets. I was the one that made the joke about forcing us to wrap the sun in a Dyson sphere one day to satisfy the need for power. It concerned us and they (Joseph and Tadge) en…

Very good points and nicely written. Are you involved in these techs?

I should make it more clear I'm far from a no-coiner and in fact I'm deeply familiar with the tech and ecosystem - e.g. i've written my own Ethereum ZK Rollup, written smart contracts, traded, made on-chain NFTs... I've been toying with blockchain technologies for a couple of years now, and transacting with cryptocurrencies for considerably longer across many L1s and L2s.

I mention that because whilst I find these technologies fascinating, as I say I think it's crucial to recognize the following:

- Bitcoin has failed to achieve its objective of being a new form of cash

- Bitcoin has failed its objective as a fair alternative financial system; in fact people are far more exploited

- Bitcoin has failed its objective to be truly decentralized

- Bitcoin is astonishingly bad for the environment

- Bitcoin advocates are incredibly toxic

- Bitcoin has facilitated illegal acts like no other technology

- Bitcoin has failed to prove it has any intrinsic value as proven by its 0.95 correlation with risk assets like tech stocks; people speculate with it and that's its only "use".

The only thing it's good for is taking money from people who want to escape their financial oppressors and putting it into the pockets of the rich. It's a negative sum game and on the whole it's the poor and disillusioned who lose.

Are those true of other cryptocurrencies too? More or less, I'd say. Can cryptocurrencies ever fix all their problems? Personally I doubt it but in theory it's doable. Do we even need these technologies? Most of the time not... but I recognize a need in some niche areas. Are these technologies even simply superior to the ones they replace? Largely that seems like not to be the case. Are there some good use cases? I personally think so, but they certainly don't justify the market caps and are the subject of another debate.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#390

Post by toolz » Thu, Jul 14, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

preseinger wrote: post #363

toolz wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flawed logic, censorship can be a mistake just like anything else. Adding the ability to fix mistakes with censorship also adds the ability to make mistakes with censorship. Censorship, however is centralized power and therefore trades fixing small scale mistakes with the centralized power to make big mistakes. This is why western society and individual liberties have been so dominant in modern history. Authoritarian…

And the ability to punish guilty people also adds the ability to punish innocent people. This doesn't mean we abandon the concept of justice.

limiting peoples ability to trade isn't justice anymore than limiting their ability to speak. Sure you could conveniently stop many crimes if you could just monitor and censor everyone's ability to speak - but I think the consequences are quite obvious.

There isn't a crime in the world that can't be stopped in more appropriate ways than giving an authority presence the ability to stop me or anyone else from spending resources that they own. Nowhere on the list of top crimes against humanity have there been situations where it would've been better if centralized powers had more authority.