"Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam," Mr Trump said. "I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar."
He added that he wanted the dollar to be "the currency of the world".
I don't think it will matter for most people.
My brain never shuts up.
Running a routing node doesn't make sense for an individual. Even at 1 sat/vbyte it was impossible for me to break even after I had a few force closures. Routing benefits greatly from economies of scale, and most individuals do not have enough capital to compete.
Also currently the lightning network is underutilized and has the potential to grow massively. As it grows every channel will be able to provide more value to the network and thereby its operators.
It's still in a bit of a bootstrap phase since there aren't a lot of places to actually spend sats with lightning yet. Once there's a higher level of adoption and we can start buying coffee or whatever irl with lightning we are going to see an explosion in capacity and the entire landscape will change.
Making art makes you an artist.
Oh I see. Well that's probably fine. Did you think about anything else I said about UTXOs?
Weekends tend to be quieter. I guess people are all out having fun or something.
Hey, I'm sorry for coming at you today with all that stuff acting like you're stacking wrong. My only intention is to help and educate. I did not mean to stress you out. Being your own bank is a big responsibility, and it's good to know this stuff for your own protection.
If Noah is the best option you've found in your country you may want to continue using that. I looked at their website and I have to say I'm not a fan of how they're "game-ifying" stacking sats with the badges and Noah points. Stacking sats and becoming self-sovereign should be enough of a reward by itself. If their fees are so low and you are withdrawing for free you are probably paying for it some other way, so try to be aware of that.
I would recommend either saving up a few million sats before withdrawing, or spreading out your purchases into larger weekly or even monthly buys if you don't want to leave the sats in their custody. I personally don't like UTXOs smaller than 10 million sats.
As for your large pile of small UTXOs you don't need to panic or do anything immediately. Right now fees are a bit elevated because of the ordinals/inscriptions hype, but that might not last much longer and fees may come down soon making consolidation more palatable. It's unlikely that fees are going to jump to unreasonable levels in the short term, so you have some time to watch and learn and decide what you want to do. I just think in the long term having all those small transactions may come back to bite you.
To give you an idea of why this is a problem I will try to explain how it works. Since there is limited space in each block, the cost of a transaction is tied directly to how much space in the block it takes up. Each transaction has at least 1 input address and 1 output address, and each address takes up some space. The smallest transactions take up only about 250 vbytes.
When you have a ton of small UTXOs, the amount of input address needed to send a transaction goes up. If you have to combine 100 inputs then the size of the transaction will be around 15,000 vbytes.
Now look at https://mempool.space/
Right now fees are pretty low. You could consolidate your UTXOs for 20 sats/vbyte if you're patient. If you have 100 inputs that will cost you 300,000 sats, or 3 days worth of your stacking. I don't know how many UTXOs you have, but pilling them up is only going to make that number worse.
Let's say in 10 years Bitcoin is worth a shitload more and you want to access your nest egg. You've been stacking 100k sats and withdrawing to your wallet daily like you've been for 3,000 days and have 3,000 UTXOs, but since Bitcoin has become very valuable and useful there is a lot more competition for blockspace and the minimum you can get a transaction through is 200 sats/vbyte.
To consolidate your 3,000 UTXOs into one transaction will take up 444,000 vbytes, and at 200 sats/vbyte that will cost you 88 million sats! Almost a whole coin! If each UTXO was for 100k that would be 3 BTC you'd saved up only to have to spend 1/3 of it just to spend it!
This is why UTXO management is important and it's best to get a handle on it now before Bitcoin becomes much more valuable. This is an extreme example, but hopefully it gets the point across.
If you have any questions I am here to answer them, and of course I encourage you to seek other sources and do your own research. I am not offended if you don't trust me, in fact I encourage you to not trust me or anyone else! Learn these things for yourself and then you only have to trust yourself. That's what getting self-sovereign is all about and it feels great.
My opinion after running a routing node on sub optimal hardware from home is a cloud based solution, but that has ongoing costs that you likely will not recoup from routing. If it's just for personal use with private channels to a few trusted and reliable peers it's fine for keeping the hardware at home.
I have an old desktop I'm thinking of converting to a start9 server and running a personal LN node. I don't have a clue how to do it, but I do think start9 looks better and more open than Umbrel, which feels like a bit of a walled garden.
Running lightning too?
Helping people on nostr is not my job. I have to drive for a living. I will not be able to respond for a few hours. I'm happy to keep helping you, but you seem concerned about trusting me and so I am advising you to seek a second opinion.
Also, this is not an emergency that you have to deal with this very moment. Take your time to learn about this stuff so you can do it with confidence and you don't need someone holding your hand. You can do this stuff without having to trust anyone.