Is Lightning, a shitcoin?
Lightning is like having bitcoin and sending some of it to someone but not actually having to pay your debt, until a force closure happens and you are forced to settle on chain.
Discussion
I read in Saifadean's book that it can be considered a money certificate, which is fully redeemable for the asset.
Money certificates, are not bitcoin.
By that logic, Lightning isn't bitcoin either.
If you ask me;
There is no second best.
And this goes for layers too.
Well none of us will be able to use layer 1 once fees go up from broad adoption. You're gonna have to pick a layer 2 or higher for most of your transactions.
If others don't have enough to cover fees to use their bitcoin, it's not my issue. Stack harder! We are all aware that's how BITCOIN works...
Trying to avoid these fees and trying to get privacy out of bitcoin, is a white paper violation.
Hal prolly rolling around in his cryo tank....
Literal quote from Hal:
"Actually there is a very good reason for Bitcoin-backed banks to exist, issuing their own digital cash currency, redeemable for bitcoins. Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain. There needs to be a secondary level of payment systems which is lighter weight and more efficient. Likewise, the time needed for Bitcoin transactions to finalize will be impractical for medium to large value purchases.
I believe this will be the ultimate fate of Bitcoin, to be the "high-powered money" that serves as a reserve currency for banks that issue their own digital cash. Most Bitcoin transactions will occur between banks, to settle net transfers. Bitcoin transactions by private individuals will be as rare as... well, as Bitcoin based purchases are today."
The way LN works reminds me of some shit bankers would do... gunna have to dive deeper.
But we don't know if bitcoin can scale for all transactions. It hasn't been tried yet. Saying it can't without even trying is the definition of insanity. We need the data from the trial to move forward with solutions or we are just taking shots in the dark hoping.
Take another look at what Hal said. He said it can't be scaled to broadcast every transaction to the blockchain, which is mathematically true. But there's no limit to scaling the value of each transaction. That ability to scale in value per transaction allows it to handle all the world's transactions from other layers in batches. From that standpoint, it makes sense what he said. And it's likely to be the outcome in the future.
It’s like the BSVers have never even heard of Hal Finney.
We do know that Bitcoin cannot scale for all transactions. The blocksize is one megabyte, or one million bytes.
The average transaction is about 500 bytes, which means we can fit ~2000 transactions in a block, every 10 minutes.
Imagine you pay for your coffee, and not only does it take 10 minutes before the coffee shop accepts your payment, but you must pay a $500 fee to be included in the next block.
Does that make sense?
Yes. Makes perfect sense because the concept of money itself is a lie.
It's merely just a concept placed between slavery and freedom that gives you the illusion of freedom, or at least lets you be free to make stupid choices, like not get house and food...now it's your own fault if you're homeless...they have absolved themselves from having to take care of we the people.
Your coffee will still cost ××× amount of sats, fee included. You are trading or bartering those sats, for coffee in this case.
If you don't find the value in something, you simply wouldnt barter your coins for it.
If it's not L1 with keys ; it's not bitcoin. There is no second best.
This is a bad argument. It’s neither necessarily nor desirable to put your coffee transactions on chain, or to pay enormous and unnecessary fees to do so. Think it through a bit more.
Remove the concept of money we've all been force fed, and you are bartering your limited edition coins for goods and services. Imo, With the way the LN operates, it's like some shit a banker would do; Not having to actually settle a transaction, until a channel(or shortcut) is closed.
You have a custodial Lightning address in your bio. Why don’t you remove it since it’s just some banker shortcut that runs counter to the concept of bitcoin?
Thought about doing this twice today.
But havent because it's an option people use to express "value" here, even though imo with how it works, its shitcoin.
🤷
Custodial is definitely a bit of a shitcoin. Have you tried to run your own Lightning node? Sats are still bitcoin. Protocol layers were intended to build things on top of. Otherwise nothing on the internet we use today would work.
Agreed but so is using a bunch of sound money upfront to send bitcoin IOUs to each other.
You didn’t answer my question though. Have you run Lightning yourself? It’s not a finished product. This is a scaling layer that is still being developed. If you want to transact everything on-chain, be my guest. There are plenty of people in the BSV community who would welcome you with open arms. I guess I’m just a shitcoiner in your eyes.
Yes I have. Lots of fees. I know it's not finished.
Bsv is trash.
Nobody is anything in my eyes but human.
Lightning labs was funded by chase
We're far from that point. Atm it's maybe not very viable to move a weekly $50 buy around on the mainchain but if you transact a proper amount the fees are still lower than most ATM fees. At least in the EU. Would I pay for a coffee with on-chain BTC, hell no! Would I pay $5 to move $1,000 into self-custody? Any time.