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The existence of Lightning is a failure of Bitcoin's designers to create a system that can scale well, they instead chose to focus on something that was going t

The existence of Lightning is a failure of Bitcoin's designers to create a system that can scale well, they instead chose to focus on something that was going to be maximum profitable for the miners in the short term and dumped responsibility off onto "L2 chains" as a kludge. The Lightning Network also doesn't "work just fine", the network is fundamentally slow, insecure and unreliable and this will likely never be fixed, because the problem space (connect an infinite number of nodes to an infinite number of other nodes efficiently) is known to be unsolvable.

samatman 4y ago
I'm only replying to say that, for all I know, you're correct in all of this. I don't think so, but that's a weakly held conviction about an entire ecosystem I don't use and understand only vaguely. The fact that I personally know people keeping hundreds of thousands of dollar-equivalent-sats on Lightning, who are happy with that arrangement, is what I'm balancing against that guy on the internet with strong opinions with 'throw' in his name. But hey maybe you know what you're talking about. It's possible. I don't.
- hnthrow1010 4y ago
  But you know that most people wouldn't put hundreds of thousands of dollars in a system like that. It would fall apart if that happened. Also, I don't know how they could be happy with it given the extreme crash over the last few months. Regarding my name: The short explanation is, I have a throwaway account in protest. If Satoshi's anonymity was enough to convince your friends to put down large sums of real money based solely on a hope, it should be enough for you to consider my (non-monetized) comments on this internet forum that's mostly pseudonymous anyway.
  - samatman 4y ago
    I was dismissive, and I did that on purpose, but I wasn't being sarcastic. Only time will tell which of you is right, all I've got is "eh. looks fine from here". As for their happiness, I know people with a lot of Bitcoin, and I know a few people who are underwater on their BTC, but there's no overlap in those groups. They might feel a twinge around 7k, more likely, they'd buy as much as they can afford.
where_to_inc 4y ago
If you think multiple layers in a payments system is undesirable, I wonder whether you make all your purchases online by putting dollars and cents into envelopes and mailing them to the merchants, or whether you use that additional layer of credit built atop the lower layer hard money supply. Bitcoin was not designed to be “maximally profitable to miners”, it was designed to be a currency that could not be captured and controlled by state actors or other large players yet would be able to sustain itself and its network by incentivizing miners to set up nodes and resist attempts at hostile takeovers of the network. [1] No other solution has managed to achieve this. There are proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies that opt to be more easily scalable on L1 at the cost that they are controllable by whoever holds the largest stakes. [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- preseinger 4y ago
  Bitcoin is not a currency. Currencies are the exclusive right of sovereign states.

samatman 4y ago

I'm only replying to say that, for all I know, you're correct in all of this. I don't think so, but that's a weakly held conviction about an entire ecosystem I don't use and understand only vaguely. The fact that I personally know people keeping hundreds of thousands of dollar-equivalent-sats on Lightning, who are happy with that arrangement, is what I'm balancing against that guy on the internet with strong opinions with 'throw' in his name. But hey maybe you know what you're talking about. It's possible. I don't.

hnthrow1010 4y ago
But you know that most people wouldn't put hundreds of thousands of dollars in a system like that. It would fall apart if that happened. Also, I don't know how they could be happy with it given the extreme crash over the last few months. Regarding my name: The short explanation is, I have a throwaway account in protest. If Satoshi's anonymity was enough to convince your friends to put down large sums of real money based solely on a hope, it should be enough for you to consider my (non-monetized) comments on this internet forum that's mostly pseudonymous anyway.
- samatman 4y ago
  I was dismissive, and I did that on purpose, but I wasn't being sarcastic. Only time will tell which of you is right, all I've got is "eh. looks fine from here". As for their happiness, I know people with a lot of Bitcoin, and I know a few people who are underwater on their BTC, but there's no overlap in those groups. They might feel a twinge around 7k, more likely, they'd buy as much as they can afford.

where_to_inc 4y ago

If you think multiple layers in a payments system is undesirable, I wonder whether you make all your purchases online by putting dollars and cents into envelopes and mailing them to the merchants, or whether you use that additional layer of credit built atop the lower layer hard money supply. Bitcoin was not designed to be “maximally profitable to miners”, it was designed to be a currency that could not be captured and controlled by state actors or other large players yet would be able to sustain itself and its network by incentivizing miners to set up nodes and resist attempts at hostile takeovers of the network. [1] No other solution has managed to achieve this. There are proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies that opt to be more easily scalable on L1 at the cost that they are controllable by whoever holds the largest stakes. [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

preseinger 4y ago
Bitcoin is not a currency. Currencies are the exclusive right of sovereign states.