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> A few transactions like these every day... You don't do "a few of these" every day. It's for moving significant amounts of money, where security starts to m

> A few transactions like these every day... You don't do "a few of these" every day. It's for moving significant amounts of money, where security starts to matter. Lightning network is for small transactions. You don't need your daily purchase of a coffee to be on the Bitcoin blockchain for the rest of history. > Whereas you could use cash and pay no fees. Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash, particularly in less safe countries.

lottin 5y ago
> Lightning network is for small transactions. That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. > Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash. I don't know how you manage your cash, I manage it myself, and I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed". Especially in a third-world country, it seems unimaginable.
- atatatat 5y ago
  They mean not being robbed.
- incrudible 5y ago
  > That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. Lightning network has virtually no fees. You were replying to someone who managed to get a "real" Bitcoin blockchain transaction through for less than a dollar. > I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed" I was thinking of the people managing cash registers.
  - lottin 5y ago
    Okay I didn't know that the LN has no fees. How does this network sustain itself economically?
    - incrudible 5y ago
      It has virtually no fees, often just one satoshi (less than 1/10th of a cent).
      - lottin 5y ago
        If fees are less than 1/10th of a cent, it means they make less than $1 for every 1000 transactions. So how many transactions are they processing? In 2019, ~5000 transactions per month [1], so the entire lightning network was generating less than $5 per month in revenue. Something doesn't add up. [1] https://www.opennode.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/OpenNode_Research_Q1-Report.pdf https://www.opennode.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Ope...
        incrudible 5y ago
        It's up to the nodes how much they want to charge, which is a competitive thing. They might as well charge 1000x more, that's just the figure the market arrived at. So, why do they charge so little? Running Lightning could be done for other reasons than just collecting fees, similar to why you might run a full Bitcoin node, even though it only costs you money: You are invested in the network as a whole. It's also worth noting that Lightning is not actually that well-adopted yet, it's more of a solution "in principle". Just because some place accepts Bitcoin doesn't mean you can use Lightning. In that case, you can usually just use Dash, Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin, which all have very low fees. Hence, the pressure to actually adopt Lightning isn't that high - yet.
        lottin 5y ago
        Yes, it's probably heavily subsidised so I expect fees to grow substantially if it becomes more popular. And the thing is the small fee is not the only fee that there is to pay. Apparently in order to open a "channel" the user needs to pay one BTC confirmation fee and another one to close it, but bitcoin enthusiasts somehow never mention this detail.
        5y ago

lottin 5y ago

> Lightning network is for small transactions. That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. > Somebody still has to spend time and money managing all that cash. I don't know how you manage your cash, I manage it myself, and I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed". Especially in a third-world country, it seems unimaginable.

atatatat 5y ago
They mean not being robbed.
incrudible 5y ago
> That's why I said a few transactions every day on average, as in 2 or 3, which seems a conservative estimate. Lightning network has virtually no fees. You were replying to someone who managed to get a "real" Bitcoin blockchain transaction through for less than a dollar. > I certainly don't know anyone who pays $20 a month to have their cash "managed" I was thinking of the people managing cash registers.
- lottin 5y ago
  Okay I didn't know that the LN has no fees. How does this network sustain itself economically?
  - incrudible 5y ago
    It has virtually no fees, often just one satoshi (less than 1/10th of a cent).
    - lottin 5y ago
      If fees are less than 1/10th of a cent, it means they make less than $1 for every 1000 transactions. So how many transactions are they processing? In 2019, ~5000 transactions per month [1], so the entire lightning network was generating less than $5 per month in revenue. Something doesn't add up. [1] https://www.opennode.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/OpenNode_Research_Q1-Report.pdf https://www.opennode.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Ope...
      - incrudible 5y ago
        It's up to the nodes how much they want to charge, which is a competitive thing. They might as well charge 1000x more, that's just the figure the market arrived at. So, why do they charge so little? Running Lightning could be done for other reasons than just collecting fees, similar to why you might run a full Bitcoin node, even though it only costs you money: You are invested in the network as a whole. It's also worth noting that Lightning is not actually that well-adopted yet, it's more of a solution "in principle". Just because some place accepts Bitcoin doesn't mean you can use Lightning. In that case, you can usually just use Dash, Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin, which all have very low fees. Hence, the pressure to actually adopt Lightning isn't that high - yet.
        lottin 5y ago
        Yes, it's probably heavily subsidised so I expect fees to grow substantially if it becomes more popular. And the thing is the small fee is not the only fee that there is to pay. Apparently in order to open a "channel" the user needs to pay one BTC confirmation fee and another one to close it, but bitcoin enthusiasts somehow never mention this detail.
        5y ago