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The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

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Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#391

Post by toolz »

ABeeSea wrote: post #339
toolz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If the countries wanted to accept the fruits and nuts, they wouldn’t need bitcoin for payments. They would do the usual trade processes. They have outlawed imports from Iran and bitcoin doesn’t change the fact that circumventing agricultural import laws is a massive crime.

incorrect, those imports paid in fiat are traceable - that's how we enforce sanctions today - we fine companies like banks for violating sanctions all the time - you know how they're caught? Financial audits, every time.

Companies use proxy countries to bypass sanctions all the time. You know how they're caught? Financial audits.

> change the fact that circumventing agricultural import laws is a massive crime

I'm not sure how people so easily forget that it was a massive crime to protect jews from being murdered. That same thing still happens today with various minority groups around the world.

If you pay attention to non-developed world problems, you become painfully aware that bypassing laws that are a "massive crime" is extremely important for solving some of the worst problems in humanity today.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#392

Post by freeAgent »

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

Satoshi did not implement the block size cap until well after the whitepaper and initial release of working Bitcoin software.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#393

Post by freeAgent »

Geee wrote: post #105
cowtools wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He also suggested raising the block size limit.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#394

Post by olalonde »

dmitriid wrote: post #379
olalonde wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you extend the same reasoning to fiat? There are many centralized services that do dispute arbitration on top of USD. Those systems are built entirely outside of USD. PayPal for example doesn't have an account at the Federal reserve nor does it handle physical cash. They are effectively "off-chain" payment systems for USD. So I guess your question is, what are the advantages of BTC over a fiat currency like USD. T…

> Do you extend the same reasoning to fiat? We are talking bout fiat? No. > So I guess your question is, what are the advantages of BTC over a fiat currency like USD. No. The question is: what does the trustless blockchain offer when you still have to rely on a centralised trusted entity. > BTC has a predictable money supply. Fiat currency doesn't: money supply can be arbitrarily inflated. Which immediately means tha…

> Do you extend the same reasoning to fiat?

I was asking about fiat because many of your criticisms equally apply to fiat.

> No. The question is: what does the trustless blockchain offer when you still have to rely on a centralised trusted entity.

I answered that multiple times already.

> Which immediately means that whoever got in early and got the first initial supply is at great advantage compared to anyone who got in later. For example compared to any people born 20 years from now.

That's, unfortunately, the case for almost anything of value.

> Could. Maybe. Should. Perhaps. That's all you can ever hear from crypto proponents.

I'm not sure I would consider myself a crypto proponent, I was trying my best to answer your questions as objectively as possible.

But it seems you are very emotionally invested in this for some reason... Did you have a bad experience with crypto?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#395

Post by skinnymuch »

teekert wrote: post #274
tablespoon wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How so? Isn't the "cyberpunk dream" a dystopia?

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

Cyberpunk is meant to be about a dystopia. Like meritocracy is a satirical take on how such a thing isn’t possible.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#396

Post by skinnymuch »

olalonde wrote: post #331
kkielhofner wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use these examples in layers (I have a networking background so my mind more or less thinks in OSI layers). For actual products bitcoin (and blockchains like Ethereum with EVM) are the fundamental enabling layer. I like to think of them somewhat akin to TCP/IP or even HTTP. Where are the higher layer applications and use cases built on blockchain with instant and obvious utility to the average person walking down t…

I agree that the Internet's utility is more obvious than Bitcoin. Bitcoin has little or even negative value to authoritarians. Even in more liberal countries, financial sovereignty and privacy are not generally viewed as important. But to me, this is just more reason to believe that the pace of adoption will be slow and gradual.

Bitcoin is an authoritarian’s wet dream as evidenced by the libertarian philosophies of crypto bros and how Bitcoin and crypto have played out.

Showing authoritarian governments don’t like Bitcoin doesn’t help. Western conservatives and CCP’s social views are very similar. Yet they despise one another. Of course. Authoritarians want to be the ones in control. Why would they like other authoritarians?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#397

Post by skinnymuch »

nayuki wrote: post #349
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…

> When will the blockchain ecosystem provide something [...] to the average user? > Google went from a research project to incorporated and usable on the internet in roughly two years I don't think this is a fair comparison. Google is a late bloomer, being preceded by lukewarm online services AltaVista, Yahoo!, and AOL. Just like how Facebook became successful when MySpace did not, the latecomer can have a substantia…

Even if Google is a late bloomer, 13 years didn’t pass since Altavista began. In Bitcoin timeline it was a baby, which seems pretty weird and like a problem.

I don’t see why Bitcoin should be compared to the internet and why Google’s timeline should be compared to the internet vs world wide web.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#398

Post by skinnymuch »

lrvick wrote: post #320
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…

It is really important to understand that decentralized systems take dramatically longer to upgrade, and thus to mature, than centralized systems. They also tend to last forever once established: see e-mail.

Aren’t the vast majority of people using corporate email or one of the big handful of email providers? Being mostly a status quo and corporate prop doesn’t seem like an advantage

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#399

Post by skinnymuch »

olalonde wrote: post #366
TradingPlaces wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am asking why I would open an account in the first place when the current system works great for me. I am sorry you find it so frustrating that I would like to know why I should switch to using Lightning. The only answer seems to be “because blockchain,” and that explains exactly nothing. Edge cases are not mass deployment use cases

Ah, I see. I didn't mean that you could literally buy a Slurpee with BTC on your watch today. It was just a hypothetical example for how it could work in the future. There aren't many use cases for the "average Joe" for now. It's still the early days and not many merchants support it. So if you aren't particularly interested in the technology/philosophy nor have a use case for it, there's probably no compelling reaso…

13 years is not early days

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#400

Post by CrazyPyroLinux »

hnthrow1010 wrote: post #137
teekert wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, fwiw, imho it's good criticism and skepticism is warranted and I agree with it. But it's early days. I always warn here on HN that we should not throw the baby away with the bathwater, meaning, don't kill (or over-regulate) blockchain before it can grow into something nice (from the monster it is now). Imho these are the seeds of something nice, but it's not there yet. I can feel it coming though, because of th…

It's not still early days. Bitcoin was created 13 years ago, it was useless for payments back then and it's still useless for payments now. Every direction that anyone takes it will be in the direction of some kind of pure money-making thing, usually in the form of a ponzi or pyramid scheme. This has happened over and over again for 13 years. There's simply no one else interested in building on this because everyone…

That's a pretty harsh criticism of the federal reserve system and "modern monetary theory" but well-deserved.
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