Harnessing Lightning reshapes you, just like lifting weights sculpts muscles: The value-for-value revolution will fundamentally change how we work, produce, consume and live on a bitcoin standard.

When someone holds your funds, these days everyone recognizes the inherent risk: The custodian might misuse the money or fail to safeguard it properly, since it isn’t theirs. But here’s the flip side: Delaying a payment carries just as much danger. When payments stall, the economy slows, productivity dips and the benefits for everyone diminish. It’s like plaque building up in arteries: You can still function, but friction drags down the entire system. If the arteries clog so much that blood can’t flow, the patient dies. The same applies to today’s banking system. The instant a bank halts all payments, it’s a flatline on the heart monitor. Unless they jolt the system with a financial defibrillator to unclog those monetary arteries, that bank — even if it holds funds — will collapse fast.

One very important point: Lightning is bitcoin. It’s not a token pegged to bitcoin’s unit of account; it’s an integral part of the system, not a parallel offshoot. All other potential edge networks will need to tie into it because relying solely on the timechain would clog the system and jack up fees unnecessarily. Yet, even if fees do spike, that’s just another nudge pushing you to figure out Lightning. Unlike the fiat world, Bitcoin operates as a free market. It’s voluntary, and everyone faces the economic fallout of their choices. Think of it like the laws of physics: The world doesn’t care if you grasp them. Misstep and you feel the sting, just like with the Lightning Network, aka Bitcoin itself. This freedom enables new tools, like split payments — another game changer.