121–130 of 145 posts
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Yes. Unfortunately Bitcoin is not the ideal solution here. What would be the ideal solution is something like nano.org, fast transaction settlement, no fees and good UX through their community wallets. Alternatives like XLM, SOL, ATOM could also be an option.
Too bad all those solutions aren't truly decentralized.
... should I stay or should I go?
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
That hasn't been my experience. I agree it is a "complex" system and has its own limitations, but when I took some time to test it, it worked well.
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So we have basically invented... banks, but with bitcoins?
With Bitcoin, I don't have to keep my savings in the bank even if I choose to use a bank for other services. As someone whose had their bank account frozen before, this is of great value to me. I could use banks or Lightning like a checking account, while keeping the majority of my savings under my control.
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
I wonder, does HN hate the "Bitcoin Cash" fork as much as BTC? It's the closest to the technical specification that made me interested in BTC in the first place.
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
> Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't) What doesn’t work? I’ve only skimmed some LN search results, and it looks like there are a bunch of services using it, including strike [0] which was mentioned in a comment of the big thread here [1]. This would have the same problem (proprietary network) you mentioned, but it seems to be working still? [0]: https://strike.me/ [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27408978
To send to someone who's offline the recipient either has to run their own always-on node, or use a custodial service.
Routing small payments (one of the goals of Lightning) is unreliable with a high chance of failure. See http://essay.utwente.nl/82015/1/Satcs_BA_EEMCS.pdf
Sigh. Bitcoin BTC, at 3 transactions per second, doesn't have the capacity to support El Salvador's economy. Even if Lightning worked (it doesn't), BTC doesn't have enough capacity to open channels for users at a reasonable cost. Salvadorians will end up forced to use proprietary payment networks denominated in BTC. BTC is not cash anymore, it won't work as such. There are other cryptos that could work, we'll have to…
I always hoped that Bitcoin would become "the people's currency" but currently it does not work as cash anymore. Lightning might become great, but the engineering needed just to send to offline nodes makes me sceptical, not to mention that the cost of funding channels is always handwaved away. I wonder, does HN hate the "Bitcoin Cash" fork as much as BTC? It's the closest to the technical specification that made me i…
Meaning you can open a channel, but if you want to sell real-world goods in exchange for anything that happens in that channel, then you'd better trust the other parties in the channel to close it properly.
tldr; Lightning is indeed super fast, but it's not as secure.
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This is the dumbest thing I've ever read. So you designed a system that sacrifices everything to achieve trustlessness, and then you immediately reintroduce a centralised trusted entity. You can't make this shit up. I'm so glad I left the crypto community in 2014, it's become completely deranged.
It is not dumb. Custodians are useful, very useful actually. With Bitcoin you can use custodians, but you can also host your bitcoins yourself if you want. The opportunity to do latter is the most important and makes Bitcoin valuable. However majority people in majority of cases prefer to use custodians, and there is nothign wrong with that.
Is the entire global system supposed to move to bitcoin just so 0.001% of people can keep their money under their mattress in a hard wallet?
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But then why use Bitcoin if you're going to use what is essentially a bank?
Once you have BTC you can choose to store it outside of a bank as a non-inflationary asset. No one can remove it from your wallet.