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The world needs bitcoin, not lightning
228 sats \ 32 comments \ @crenshaw 12h bitcoin
Bitcoin allows us to send meaningful amounts of money to each other using a set of simple software tools and the internet. That's it. No complex node setups or trusting third-parties with funds and infrastructure... It is purely peer to peer.
Lightning has not accomplished this and at its best requires so much compromise to work for most people that even if it technically operates on bitcoin, no one interacts with actual bitcoin in the end. You're better off using dollars or any other kind of fiat. Or just the main chain if you must.
It's a shame how much the apologist narrative around lightning has taken hold because it obscures the fact that it is less useful than regular money in so many ways. Many lightning advocates suffer from a sunk cost fallacy. It's time to move on.
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283 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 10h
I have used lightning, in person, to buy things in multiple countries and overall it worked very well. Custodial, non-custodial on an umbrel, and non-custodial through an LSP they all went through.
The payments were cheap, almost instant, and they did what no-other cryptocurrency can do…
Cheap quick proof of work payments that are legitimately scalable for millions of people.
No waiting for 20 minutes to ‘spend the utxo again’. No using a chain (ie bcash) with totally empty blocks. No raising the block size which comes with its own set of compromises (unacceptable)
The shipcoiners hate lightning and no matter what they say ‘it’s failed’. Because it gives “their coin” basically no reason to exist.
No other cryptocurrency does what Bitcoin/lightning does meaning it 1) doesn’t raise the block size 2) doesn’t require empty blocks and 3) allows for instant transactions that are actually proof of work that aren’t a giant pos scam.
Any crypto that isn’t ’proof of work’ is a scam and does not compete it doesn’t count.
And in the PoW arena there’s nothing else that brings scalable ‘sound money’ to millions of people as realistically as Bitcoin + Lightning.
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438 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 11h
Even better idea: If you need to send someone sats peer to peer, why not do it by establishing a lightning channel to them with an opening balance on their side? Best of both worlds: P2P payments with your partner, plus optionality to use the broader network for low-cost and fast payments
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @crenshaw OP 2h
At today's fees, I can just send on-chain for pretty cheap.
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165 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 11h
You're better off using dollars or any other kind of fiat.
What are the properties of fiat that make it better?
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50 sats \ 0 replies \ @standardcrypto 8h
when Bitcoin fees are $500/transaction you'll be glad lightning exists.
kids these days 🥸
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66 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 10h
This post has to be satire on a social media site that uses lightning at its core
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104 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 12h
Many times every day people route through my node, which was super easy to setup.
I honestly can’t fathom what you’re talking about.
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @byzantine 8h
yes setting up a node and running it myself is super easy.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 43m
R U being sarcastic? Because in my (admittedly a while ago) experience it was the opposite. Not easy at all.
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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 10h
I'm not an expert and I might be wrong, but using Bitcoin independently requires the same tools needed to open a channel on the Lightning Network. Otherwise, you have to rely on third-party solutions.
You're better off using dollars or any other kind of fiat.
You're way better off using LN custodial than any fiat.
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90 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 11h
Building in layers requires additional complexity and trade offs. You don't need to use lightning if you don't want to. Here are some cowboy credits for you.
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @crenshaw OP 2h
Thanks!
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130 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 11h
Aren't you side stepping that most on-chain usage isn't peer to peer either (most use an exchange)?
To be more accurate, I think you'd want to say that lightning is more of a failure than bitcoin. Because if custodial bitcoin MoE usage is equivalent to failure, bitcoin is a failure too.
At least intuitively, it's unlikely that any layer 2 is less complex than layer 1, and if complexity greater than layer 1 means failure to you, I'm not sure you'll reach nirvana anytime soon.
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @crenshaw OP 2h
I don't think I'm side-stepping the issue with exchanges facilitating so many payments, mainly because I can easily rationalize that individuals still have the ability to very easily send payments on-chain to one another with or without an exchange. That is not the case with lightning.
I wouldn't frame my pov as "lightning is more of a failure than bitcoin" or that custodial bitcoin MoE would be equal to failing. I do, however, believe that the direction lightning is headed in as a primarily custodial layer for bitcoin payments undercuts most of what makes bitcoin so powerful as a peer-to-peer network. My fear is that if lightning continues in this direction it will be as unimpressive as USDC or Tether.
Framing this more broadly: What incentive do people have to acquire and then spend bitcoin if it works just like fiat does? It's cheaper and more convenient to spend in dollars or USDC in most situations today. The ideal of lightning (self-hosted, instant, peer-to-peer) is inspiring. But the reality is so far from that ideal and I think the compromises have gone too far for too long.
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14 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 5h
Lol
You're literally posting this on LN platform. Wake up!
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107 sats \ 0 replies \ @byzantine 8h
stacker news uses lightning and it works great
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @gentle 3h
É o futuro
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 3h
Without LN everyday consumer spending and wider MoE utility would be impossible. Bitcoin needs to be viable as a MoE or it will be captured and controlled by the fiat operators and re packaged as a speculative commodity plaything.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 4h
This sounds like bcasher talk.
If you don't know or were not around during the block size wars, you might be looking for easy answers to difficult technical problems.
If you want everything to be on-chain, BCash or Bitcoin SV might be more your style. It has not worked out well for those fork chains.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @crenshaw OP 2h
Let's revisit this debate the next time on-chain fees spike.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 1h
There’s no free lunch dude. If you want to use on-chain… you pay. If “lots” of people want to use on-chain simultaneous then they pay. Why is high demand bad?
The same goes for lightning… one payment to open a channel then cheap payments that can be ‘refilled’ almost endlessly. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of a system that is working today, despite it only having been around a few years.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @hasherstacker 5h
Lightning has not accomplished this and at its best requires so much compromise to work for most people that even if it technically operates on bitcoin, no one interacts with actual bitcoin in the end.
It's very unfortunate that while Lightning was designed to improve cost, speed and scalability; some tool an advantage of its openness and saw an opportunity to introduce shitcoins onto the LN.
You're better off using dollars or any other kind of fiat. Or just the main chain if you must.
How is that even possible to be better off using fiat?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @crenshaw OP 2h
How is that even possible to be better off using fiat?
Well for starters, just about everyone takes it as payment.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 1h
So since lightning (or Bitcoin generally) isn’t ‘widely accepted’ isn’t not worth spending? What?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @3a42879d5f 5h
I want to agree with you because decentralization and p2p is essential, but I don't because it's not practical. There have been times in Bitcoin 2018-2021(?) where it cost me double digits worth of USD to make a Bitcoin transaction. IDK about you, but I'm not paying $10-40 USD in FEES to pay for a $5 subscription. In those times, I quit using Bitcoin and I used Paypal instead. I want Bitcoin to be a medium of exchange, not just a store of value.
Lightning isn't perfect and I'm not saying that's THE solution, but we can't scale transactions on-chain. Maybe you're sour about the blocksize wars? I know I am. I'm a Roger Ver fan and I wanted big blocks. We lost though, the market picked small blocks, and now we gotta figure something out.
Best thing we got is Lighting. I'm hopeful that something even better comes along. Something more private, p2p. I don't think it's Ecash. Cashu forgets, "Not your keys not your coin" and there's little incentive for custodians to play nice and not rug (other than ecash wallet app developers.) Wasn't there another two methods? Liquid? Or was that vaporware? I don't know.
Honestly my ideal scaling solution fantasy right now is a Dogecoin Drivechain. The drivechain would link transactions between BTC and DOGE. DOGE uses PoW so it's tolerable. Basically do business on DOGE and settle on BTC. IDK if that's realistic though, I'm not a bitcoin dev.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 6h
Strongly disagree. Bitcoin was incorrectly conceived as currency in itself. It's not, it's the base settlement layer to build currencies on top of. Not even lightning is the currency layer, it's a middle layer. The top layer, the one to be used for currency, is ecash.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 8h
Fiat money hegemony over MoE is being shielded via sly tax obligations which impose undue compliance costs upon LN users. In most autocracies (under which 70% of humanity live Bitcoin/LN MoE is explicitly outlawed. This has resulted in very limited acceptance by merchants and use by consumers.
All this has resulted in Bitcoin becoming increasingly seen as, and primarily used as a speculative commodity, taxed and KYC-traced...as such it is of little to no threat to fiats power which is based upon its MoE hegemony.
If you do not understand why the legacy fiat operators have imposed this obstruction of Bitcoin MoE, you remain an ignorant slave to be farmed by them until death and beyond...
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @kyletorpey 8h
Lightning isn't perfect and will take a long time to build out properly. The correct scaling path can be harder and take more time. But it can work well with tradeoffs today and will improve over time. I wrote a rather in-depth piece about this recently in the context of the debate between Alex Gladstein and Paul Sztorc on What Bitcoin Did: https://protos.com/sztorc-vs-gladstein-can-lightning-scale-bitcoin/
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @crenshaw OP 2h
Funny thing, that debate is actually what partially triggered this post. I found Alex's parroting of tired lightning talking points exhausting and so representative of the discourse around lightning for the past few years. Yes, Paul might be overly pessimistic in many ways but he is speaking to a reality on the ground that no one uses lightning but enthusiasts. Adoption just isn't happening and it's incredibly frustrating to see people hand-wave serious issues around onboarding and custody with excuses like "it's just for small amounts".
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 1h
A major American fast food chain, Steak n Shake, now takes lightning. It works and you can buy cheeseburgers and fries straight from your lightning wallet.
You should try it sometime.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @janetyellen 9h
Why are you gay crenshaw?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @hasherstacker 10h
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