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The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

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Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#421

Post by once_inc »

ooaa wrote: post #52
arcticbull wrote: post #21

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…

[dead]

With Schnorr signature aggregation, you can combine an unlimited number of signatures, but Bitcoin has a maximum of 4MB witness data, so there is certainly a cap.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#422

Post by ETH_start »

TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #406
ETH_start wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>and those LN could be responsible for an inordinant amount of volume Theoretically yes, in practice no. Routing complexity increases as usage increases without a commensurate increase in channel collateral, because increased usage leads to more channels using up the collateral for one direction of transmissions, which eliminates the transmissibility of one of the two routes in the channel. The network would thus na…

>Theoretically yes, in practice no. ...? 1.) I have a direct disincentive to include more collateral than would be absolutely required. 2.) Most of the time LN's only need to go one way. 3.) The only thing your original graph shows is that the price of bitcoin has fallen. 4.) I anecedotely know there has been more use in LN among all my crypto friends and in South/ central America where i have seen increased use in C…

1. My point is about how much collateral is required for a given amount of usage.

2. LN transactions going one way makes the collateral situation worse, by preventing collateral from being replenished by counter-flow transactions.

3. It shows how little value is locked in LN channels relative to value of BTC outstanding.

The rest of your points are either not relevant or have already been addressed.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#423

Post by notpushkin »

skinnymuch wrote: post #415
olalonde wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can set up a stripe account to accept payments very easily. Doesn't it require having a U.S. corporation? That's a few hundred dollars off the bat. It also requires you to provide evidence that you are within the types of businesses they authorize. I also suppose it requires having a bank account. Opening a business bank account does not take a few minutes and it can be close to impossible for certain categorie…

Stripe does not require having a business. In the west, opening a business bank account does indeed take a few minutes. There’s more than enough that allow opening one online. It isn’t needed for Stripe or many payment providers, so it’s a moot point. Same with many payment providers not requiring a business. References: - https://support.stripe.com/questions/selling-on-stripe-witho... - https://www.statrys.com/blog/…

Not sure about the U.S., but in at least in Russia and Estonia sole proprietorship is a form of business – in a sense that you have to register it, do annual reports (or more often), calculate taxes etc.

In Russia, it is a bit easier than running an LLC, so many entrepreneurs choose to start as an SP. In Estonia I've seen zero sole proprietors – the burden is the same, but LLC taxes are more favourable (0% income tax until you pay out dividiends) and limited liability (which you don't get as an SP).

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#424

Post by notpushkin »

notpushkin wrote: post #423
skinnymuch wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripe does not require having a business. In the west, opening a business bank account does indeed take a few minutes. There’s more than enough that allow opening one online. It isn’t needed for Stripe or many payment providers, so it’s a moot point. Same with many payment providers not requiring a business. References: - https://support.stripe.com/questions/selling-on-stripe-witho... - https://www.statrys.com/blog/…

Not sure about the U.S., but in at least in Russia and Estonia sole proprietorship is a form of business – in a sense that you have to register it, do annual reports (or more often), calculate taxes etc. In Russia, it is a bit easier than running an LLC, so many entrepreneurs choose to start as an SP. In Estonia I've seen zero sole proprietors – the burden is the same, but LLC taxes are more favourable (0% income tax…

I've done some research (which in this case is a fancy way of saying “opened up Wikipedia” [1]) and looks like in the U.S. you can just run a sole proprietorship without filing anything. Neat!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship#United_Sta...

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#425

Post by exabyte »

ponyous wrote: post #76
exabyte wrote: post #73

I run a lightning node at a cafe and we receive a few orders a day. Record had been 8 orders in one day.

Interesting. Where is that cafe located?

now that some time has passed, here's the web app if you wanna check it out! https://emporium.atitlan.io

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#426

Post by skinnymuch »

notpushkin wrote: post #424
notpushkin wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about the U.S., but in at least in Russia and Estonia sole proprietorship is a form of business – in a sense that you have to register it, do annual reports (or more often), calculate taxes etc. In Russia, it is a bit easier than running an LLC, so many entrepreneurs choose to start as an SP. In Estonia I've seen zero sole proprietors – the burden is the same, but LLC taxes are more favourable (0% income tax…

I've done some research (which in this case is a fancy way of saying “opened up Wikipedia” [1]) and looks like in the U.S. you can just run a sole proprietorship without filing anything. Neat! [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sole_proprietorship#United_Sta...

This is confusing. Are people legally allowed to get a lot of income from Bitcoin without a SP or more in these countries? Will Stripe automatically deny people without a sole proprietorship in these countries? What happens if people are able to get on Stripe without an SP in these countries? I assume no one is going to jail over this.

I don’t expect you to know the answers to these questions, but the focus was on the difference between Bitcoin and Stripe/PayPal, etc. The thing I replied to specifically said there was an onus of several hundred dollars which I was disputing as well and which is not correct for the US.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#427

Post by spiralx »

bendtheblock wrote: post #297
bendtheblock wrote: post #140

Due to blockchain's architectural shortcomings, you need to do the transactions off chain. Fine... But crypto-"currencies" are actually highly speculative assets (as South Africa declared today [1]). No bro will spend them - the ideology is to HODL for 100k remember [2]? Earnest patron saints like Laszlo Hanyecz bought two papa john’s pizzas in 2010 for what would be worth today roughly $200,000,000 [3]. They wanted…

what's wrong with this comment?! that it's anti-crypto? currency needs to be a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value. Given its volatility, Bitcoin could only ever realistically be useful for the latter, and only then as a risky speculation.

A "store of value" when talking about the properties of a useful currency implies that the value is largely stable so that it can be "stored" over the medium- and long-term. So that's actually the property BTC is worst at due of its volatility. Actually, no, 4 transactions per second globally means "medium of exchange" is the property of money BTC is worse at.

Your point that BTC was supposed to be a currency and has turned into a speculative asset is true though, and BTC proponents often dislike it when someone points that out. LN is just an attempt to make BTC better as a "medium of exchange" which is fine, but it still doesn't address the fact that BTC is a terrible store of value, it just reduces the volatility of the transaction fee (in theory).

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#428

Post by bytelines »

dmitriid wrote: post #385
bytelines wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm very confused by both of your points. The supply of a cryptocurrency is equal to a person? A crypto token is not a person so I'm guessing you missed a few words there?

How is building a competing chain to more efficiently solve a problem (high transaction fees) in a competitive market in any way "dismissing" that problem? That seems the exact opposite of dismissing a problem.

Do those new solutions come with new problems? Sure, that's true of any technology. Dynamo-based databases solved high availability and network partitionability of data but come with several trade-offs. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use Cassandra for anything.

That said, Solana is not the hill I'm willing to die on and it's hot garbage. Hedera seems good though.

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#429

Post by bytelines »

olalonde wrote: post #237
bytelines wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would lightning network approach comply with KYC laws?

That question is highly dependent on jurisdiction. The prevailing opinion right now is that Lightning nodes are not subject to KYC regulations in the US.

What is to prevent the network from facilitating money laundering and purchase of illegal goods?

Re: The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

#430

Post by kag0 »

null0pointer wrote: post #345
kag0 wrote: post #264

I've stopped following bitcoin at a deep level for some time. Could someone summarize for me what changes/problems led current bitcoin to need lightning?

Some years ago bitcoin started running into scaling issues. The period between blocks is fixed at 10 minutes and the maximum size of each block is also fixed at 1Mb so the network transaction throughput was quite limited. Because of the limited transaction throughput the fees per transaction increased significantly because miners prioritize the high-fee transactions for inclusion in blocks. Low fee transactions would…

Thanks for the recap. That sounds pretty familiar. I found https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy to refresh myself as well, but there's clearly a lot of detail missing.
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