3 ms·

I remember a period somewhere in the 2010s where it wasn't uncommon to see a business experiment with accepting Bitcoin (as Steam did), before transaction fees

by paulgb 5y ago

I remember a period somewhere in the 2010s where it wasn't uncommon to see a business experiment with accepting Bitcoin (as Steam did), before transaction fees made it impractical. Given the way people talk about LN, and the (quite understandable!) desire to avoid credit card transaction fees, why don't we see more businesses accepting it? (Asking this in good faith; I am admittedly ignorant about LN and have not tried making a transaction with it.)

londons_explore 5y ago
There are just too few users on the LN. Of the whole world population, there is probably fewer than 1 in a million who could just scan a qr code and make a lightning payment.
TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
yeah, a couple of companies in the space are experimenting with the concept of an omni-pool. Essentially, since arbitrage bots are a constant you don't need an outside oracle to ensure there's very little slippage between assets. Addititionnally, since you are swapping inside the pool it does not incur a trade fee as you aren't trading some outside entity with a confirmation time. Obviously it gets deep in math, but what you get it the ability to pay for anything with anything with no trading fees and a % APR for keeping your assets in the omni pool. Solona and dot already beat visa in transaction speed, latency and confirmation time. DOT at technology maturity is looking to be able to process around 10X the transaction volumes of visa.
- thallium205 5y ago
  Oh cool so a centralized payment system except stupid complicated. Sounds like another winning crypto invention to me.
  - sebzim4500 5y ago
    Not sure about the others but Solana is not centralized.
    - rglullis 5y ago
      How much does it cost to run a node? Strictu sensu, it is "decentralized". In practice, it has all the disadvantages of blockchains and none of the advantages of the traditional banking networks.
      - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
        it's profitable.
        rglullis 5y ago
        Owning a bank also is. Your point?
        TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
        I can't open a bank, but i can run a node.
  - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
    Low Trade Fees, cross-colatorilization, instantanious and algorithmic liquidation. imagine i wanted to buy Tesla. I have no money but i do have GM Stock. This allows mee to trade GM directly for Tesla stock with no actual trade fee, because the trade never occurs until i pull all my money out out of the pool. So i am exposed to the asset without having to do the centralized exchange way of selling the asset (Incurring trade fee) buying usd. selling USD for the next asset (Incurring a trade fee) then eventually selling it back to USD when i want to utilize that asset.(Incurring a trade fee). So, like i explained before it is a much more efficient mechanism of trading any asset. Since trading is literally the bedrock of civilization and effective capital allocation through trading is what drives prosperity, creating a more efficient trading algorithmn in crypto is one of the finest achievement of our generation even though most haven't undeerstood it's significance yet. The soverign individual was a good book for me to recognize the need for crypto in the world.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
dale_glass 5y ago
I'm not the best person to answer, but lacking better ones, here's what I know: * LN is technically complex, and hard for a normal person to run. * LN requires making an on-chain transaction to open a channel. It's still vulnerable to high BTC fees and limited by the chain's low capacity. * LN still runs on top of BTC, and has all the economic characteristics BTC has. So if it's stupid to buy pizza for $10K BTC because it appreciates, or stupid to sell a game for 0.0012 BTC because the price might fall tomorrow, then LN changes nothing about that and in some cases makes it worse. LN allows a non-cooperative party to delay things, which could be used maliciously during price swings. * It's all still happening inside the crypto ecosystem, which is unpleasant to deal with. Think of say how people tried to buy their Tesla in BTC, then asked for their money back when the price rose. Why would a merchant want to deal with that kind of thing? LN to me is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig -- it still leaves many significant problems in place, and adds some new ones on top in exchange for the benefits it provides.
onelastjob 5y ago
LN is too complicated imo. You can just use other chains if you want fast and cheap txs. Solana, Nano, Near, any of those.
lawn 5y ago
Simply because LN isn't practical: - You still need to open (and close) a channel, paying BTC fees. - To accept a payment, you need to first lock up balance. - You need to always be online, otherwise your channel is closed. - Sometimes your payment can fail, if you cannot find a route. This risk increases with the payment amount. - Sometimes, you cannot even find a payment route, so you need to open another channel. - Sometimes, the other person on the other side of your channel might close your channel. - Despite all this, payments might still have a relatively expensive fee (in addition to the BTC fees). People are trying to create solutions for these problems, but they're often either quite complex, introduce third-party dependency or both.
3np 5y ago
I think it’s just a matter of businesses perceiving the potential revenue increase not worth the overhead, combined with the resulting slow growth and development of ecosystem of service providers. Running an independent node does take some management above that of a normal bitcoin node and merchant tooling and open source integrations are still coming together (though there are some good and dependable options). A merchant will need to keep an eye on their incoming liquidity, or use a service provider that does. That being said, once you’re actually using it it’s a great experience, and for the individual enthusiast running a node can be great fun. One service provider is Bitrefill, where you can buy Steam credits (and much else) over Lightning with a throwaway email faster than it takes for me to dig and type out a credit card out of my wallet or go through the SMS2FA BS of whatever virtual credit card-supporting bank I can find in the country I happen to be living in. Just copy and paste an invoice or scan a QR, depending on your wallet interface. I do hope we see Lightning support in Coinbase Commerce et al soon. Unfortunately BitPay, one of the oldest and I think the most widely used payment service provider for Bitcoin, has become pretty much unusable as of lately and even if they did add lightning support it wouldn’t be interesting.

by paulgb 5y ago

londons_explore 5y ago

There are just too few users on the LN. Of the whole world population, there is probably fewer than 1 in a million who could just scan a qr code and make a lightning payment.

TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago

yeah, a couple of companies in the space are experimenting with the concept of an omni-pool. Essentially, since arbitrage bots are a constant you don't need an outside oracle to ensure there's very little slippage between assets. Addititionnally, since you are swapping inside the pool it does not incur a trade fee as you aren't trading some outside entity with a confirmation time. Obviously it gets deep in math, but what you get it the ability to pay for anything with anything with no trading fees and a % APR for keeping your assets in the omni pool. Solona and dot already beat visa in transaction speed, latency and confirmation time. DOT at technology maturity is looking to be able to process around 10X the transaction volumes of visa.

thallium205 5y ago
Oh cool so a centralized payment system except stupid complicated. Sounds like another winning crypto invention to me.
- sebzim4500 5y ago
  Not sure about the others but Solana is not centralized.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    How much does it cost to run a node? Strictu sensu, it is "decentralized". In practice, it has all the disadvantages of blockchains and none of the advantages of the traditional banking networks.
    - TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
      it's profitable.
      - rglullis 5y ago
        Owning a bank also is. Your point?
        TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
        I can't open a bank, but i can run a node.
- TrapLord_Rhodo 5y ago
  Low Trade Fees, cross-colatorilization, instantanious and algorithmic liquidation. imagine i wanted to buy Tesla. I have no money but i do have GM Stock. This allows mee to trade GM directly for Tesla stock with no actual trade fee, because the trade never occurs until i pull all my money out out of the pool. So i am exposed to the asset without having to do the centralized exchange way of selling the asset (Incurring trade fee) buying usd. selling USD for the next asset (Incurring a trade fee) then eventually selling it back to USD when i want to utilize that asset.(Incurring a trade fee). So, like i explained before it is a much more efficient mechanism of trading any asset. Since trading is literally the bedrock of civilization and effective capital allocation through trading is what drives prosperity, creating a more efficient trading algorithmn in crypto is one of the finest achievement of our generation even though most haven't undeerstood it's significance yet. The soverign individual was a good book for me to recognize the need for crypto in the world.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

dale_glass 5y ago

I'm not the best person to answer, but lacking better ones, here's what I know: * LN is technically complex, and hard for a normal person to run. * LN requires making an on-chain transaction to open a channel. It's still vulnerable to high BTC fees and limited by the chain's low capacity. * LN still runs on top of BTC, and has all the economic characteristics BTC has. So if it's stupid to buy pizza for $10K BTC because it appreciates, or stupid to sell a game for 0.0012 BTC because the price might fall tomorrow, then LN changes nothing about that and in some cases makes it worse. LN allows a non-cooperative party to delay things, which could be used maliciously during price swings. * It's all still happening inside the crypto ecosystem, which is unpleasant to deal with. Think of say how people tried to buy their Tesla in BTC, then asked for their money back when the price rose. Why would a merchant want to deal with that kind of thing? LN to me is a bit like putting lipstick on a pig -- it still leaves many significant problems in place, and adds some new ones on top in exchange for the benefits it provides.

onelastjob 5y ago

LN is too complicated imo. You can just use other chains if you want fast and cheap txs. Solana, Nano, Near, any of those.

lawn 5y ago

Simply because LN isn't practical: - You still need to open (and close) a channel, paying BTC fees. - To accept a payment, you need to first lock up balance. - You need to always be online, otherwise your channel is closed. - Sometimes your payment can fail, if you cannot find a route. This risk increases with the payment amount. - Sometimes, you cannot even find a payment route, so you need to open another channel. - Sometimes, the other person on the other side of your channel might close your channel. - Despite all this, payments might still have a relatively expensive fee (in addition to the BTC fees). People are trying to create solutions for these problems, but they're often either quite complex, introduce third-party dependency or both.

3np 5y ago

I think it’s just a matter of businesses perceiving the potential revenue increase not worth the overhead, combined with the resulting slow growth and development of ecosystem of service providers. Running an independent node does take some management above that of a normal bitcoin node and merchant tooling and open source integrations are still coming together (though there are some good and dependable options). A merchant will need to keep an eye on their incoming liquidity, or use a service provider that does. That being said, once you’re actually using it it’s a great experience, and for the individual enthusiast running a node can be great fun. One service provider is Bitrefill, where you can buy Steam credits (and much else) over Lightning with a throwaway email faster than it takes for me to dig and type out a credit card out of my wallet or go through the SMS2FA BS of whatever virtual credit card-supporting bank I can find in the country I happen to be living in. Just copy and paste an invoice or scan a QR, depending on your wallet interface. I do hope we see Lightning support in Coinbase Commerce et al soon. Unfortunately BitPay, one of the oldest and I think the most widely used payment service provider for Bitcoin, has become pretty much unusable as of lately and even if they did add lightning support it wouldn’t be interesting.