I've been running a full Bitcoin node on a raspi for almost 3 years now. I keep it up to date and sync'd, and use it mainly for my own education and to monitor my utxos as I hodl. I suppose it adds in some small way to the robustness of the network, but it has no commercial raison d'etre really.

Just recently I opened my first lightning channels, connected a self-custody BlueWallet backend and ran a bunch of test transactions with Strike, Alby, and Nostr. I haven't deposited much Bitcoin into it yet but in the course of moving a few million sats back and forth I've managed to establish a little bit of inbound liquidity...

And now I realize, I have nothing to sell and very little prospect for earning significant Bitcoin in network routing fees. So I'm just wondering to myself... why am I doing this? Can anybody offer this Odler Hodler some insight or incentive to continue down the Lightning node rabbit hole?

Wish I was there for that! Happy to be here now ⚡️🙌