I'm Romain Rouphael, Co-Founder of LN Markets AMA
13.1k sats \ 1000 boost \ 42 comments \ @romain_rouphael 13 Apr 2022 bitcoin
Hi all, very happy to do an AMA today! Let's start at 6pm UTC and I'll be around for 1-2 hours.
I’m open to discuss any topic on Bitcoin, Lightning, Finance and LN Markets of course.
Some topic ideas:
  • The state of the Lightning Network
  • Challenges of running Lightning nodes
  • Bitcoin Miami
  • LN Markets Newsletter
  • Bitcoin in Europe
  • Bitcoin Futures & Options
  • Financial markets
  • Gamification of Trading
  • Data analysis
  • Memes
  • Football
  • Surf
  • Music
  • Trail, etc.
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100 sats \ 4 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
Woh you gave me way too many sats, I'll be happy to give it all back to the stacker news community of course! This platform is awesome
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41 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 13 Apr 2022
If you're hiring at LNMarkets, you can add a job to the Stacker News job board with those sats (https://stacker.news/~jobs).
You'll get to advertise your job listing in front of 15,000+ monthly unique visitors & all the sats spent are paid directly back to SN users each day.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 14 Apr 2022
Duly noted, thanks!
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6 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 13 Apr 2022
You can give back to the posts that you think give the most value ;)
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 14 Apr 2022
That's exactly what I'm gonna do ;)
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579 sats \ 1 reply \ @LatiNodos 13 Apr 2022 freebie
Wen LN Brokers?
a trustless solution where you can provide capital to high reputation traders- or anything along those lines in the plans?
gracias!
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22 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
We're currently more focused on non-custodial trading on top of Bitcoin, with solutions such as DLCs for example. We love Bisq and their reputation system, but it's not where we're heading next I guess. We're also curious about what TBD is going to deliver, the tbDEX seemed quite similar to Bisq at first glance. We try to build step by step, the goal is definitely to build a non-custodial / trustless trading platform on top of Bitcoin.
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579 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 13 Apr 2022
  1. In early December, you mentioned that LNMarkets had done over $300M of trading volume since inception (
    ). How has trading volume grown since then?
  2. Do you think options or futures volume will be a larger component of LNMarkets business in 5 years? Will LNMarkets add any additional types of trading?
  3. What project/announcement were you most impressed with at the Bitcoin Miami conference?
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90 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022 freebie
Hey, thanks for your questions!
  1. Trading volume has been going steadily up, we added 50% more aggregate trading volume since December, around $450M
  2. Hard to say, but options is clearly a very fast growing market. If I had to make a guess, maybe 40% Options / 60% futures? Yes, we plan to add more products. A lot more. With futures and options, we can already do some very funny combinations. We had this idea of liquidation killer for example, using options which could be fun. We can further add other derivatives. With stablecoins on Lightning, we could also add PL delivery in USD.
  3. I must confess I was not there, but Victor and Fanis were and sent us a lot of info about what was going on there. It seems like Lightning and mining were the two biggest topics. The Taro announcement might be the biggest imo because it could unleash a tidal wave of new projects (philosophical questions aside) and it's awesome to see the team leveraging taproot in such a way.
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556 sats \ 1 reply \ @kiwiidb 13 Apr 2022 freebie
How can LNMarkets operate legally without requiring KYC right now?
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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022 freebie
Regulation is a very important and tough topic to address for Lightning companies. Especially when you offer trading services. With LN Markets, we have wanted to build a platform where you just need your wallet and your keys to authenticate and have direct access to the platform, with lnurl-auth. We think this feature is kinda like magic and we want to keep it. So far, we've flied under the radars, with limited amounts and no promotion of the platform. Meanwhile we are working on regulatory schemes. But our most important objective is to build full non custodial solutions on top of Bitcoin to solve these regulatory points
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536 sats \ 1 reply \ @zuspotirko 13 Apr 2022
So, what is your opinion on Bitcoin in Europe? I feel like we are a lot further behind.
It may be because the Internet as a whole still feels like something new for a lot of people. E.g. Merkel famously said "The Internet is New found Land for all of us". And with a lot of boomers still looking condescending on smartphones. While even congress/senate politicians in the us being on twitter - quite unthinkable here.
Do you agree? Or do you see the issue more with the economics of a hard money being more controvers here? Or do you even agree that Europe will be the last ones to catch up?
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24 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
I'm afraid I'll have to agree with on that. It feels like Europe has decided to play the role of the regulatooooooor. We've seen it with AI. We can't compete with US or China on AI, so we'll try to be the leaders in regulation. And the same is happening for Bitcoin and crypto-assets. There's a joke in France that says, when the administration sees an industry that tries to innovate, first it will tax it. Then it will regulate it. Then, when the administration is sure that nothing moves anymore, it starts subsidizing it. I'm afraid that might happen in France once again. The recent debates at the EU parliament highlighted this approach. First on proof-of-work: some MPs just did not do their homework on this topic, instead relying on false data and easy narrative to try to ban PoW. And regarding KYC for "unhosted wallets". We don't know what it is but we're afraid so we'll push the hardest regulation possible. But this doesn't affect Bitcoin at all. Bitcoin companies just go elsewhere were they feel more welcome, in Switzerland, in the UK, the US, Asia, etc. What I find the most frustrating is that if we made a clear choice to support a neutral protocol like Bitcoin instead of toying with CBDCs ideas that will go nowhere, it would still be time to be a leader in the field..
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533 sats \ 2 replies \ @0xtr 13 Apr 2022
  1. What are your top 3 things on the roadmap for LN Markets?
  2. Do you see a future where LN Markets is getting into other markets than Bitcoin?
  3. How did you get into Bitcoin and LN?
  4. Current top 3 artists you're listening to right now?
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221 sats \ 1 reply \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
  1. Top 3 things are: Bitcoin Options on Mainnet / Deposits and Withdrawals on-chain / Non custodial Option Trading with DLCs + we a fun surprise coming next week! If you want other stuff, just let us know!
  2. It depends whether it's Bitcoin the infrastructure or bitcoin the asset. I don't see a future where we build elsewhere than on Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin is the best collateral in the world, with the highest level of security, 2 very important features when you want to build a trading platform. Regarding listing other assets, we don't see it as a priority right now (and we did not have that much request from users on it so far..), but it may change in the future, for example with stablecoins on Lightning. I think tokenized stocks is a fascinating topic, but it also brings other complexities..
  3. I lived in Hong Kong and I stumbled upon an ATM Bitcoin machine, around 2014. When I realized that using Bitcoin, you could send money all over the world, at low fees, in 10 min, I was blown away. And when I started digging and realized that all this was built on open source code, on a P2P network, with its own governance system I started to realize this we had something completely new that could change the world. I started getting the details of Bitcoin with Princeton course and when I came back in France in 2015, I knew I wanted to dedicate myself to it. With my co-founders, we have a finance background, so we started doing consulting / development for financial institutions on this topic. And when Lightning emerged, we had this idea to build instant trading on top of it, which became LN Markets.
  4. 3 albums I listen to most are: The Strokes - The Adults are talking / Baby Keem - The melodic blue / DJ Mehdi - Lucky boy at night. And of course French classics like Gainsbourg, Air, etc.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xtr 13 Apr 2022
Thanks for great answers and for LN Markets Romain! Keep buidling!
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540 sats \ 1 reply \ @JeanClaudeRW 13 Apr 2022 freebie
Hi, Would you ever talk about the state of Bitcoin in Africa?
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
I wish I knew more about it! We would love to go and meet people there. Fode Diop has announced at Bitcoin Miami the organization of a Bitcoin conference in Ghana next December. I hope we can attend it and find out more. Meanwhile, I don't really talk about it just because I lack sufficient knowledge about it..
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525 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 13 Apr 2022
Which BTC/LN developments are you the most exited about? What is missing the most? Is there any practical use for Taro (and ~ RGB) in LNM?
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
Let's start by what I missing the most, and it's very down to earth: a Lightning mobile testnet wallet!! There used to be Eclair but it's deprecated. And SBW testnet was great, but it's no longer available for download. I would find it very useful for testnet.lnmarkets.com. Also, I tried to teach Lightning to students, but wihtout this Testnet wallet it's more complex to make them feel lightning.. Regarding Bitcoin developments, I'm looking forward to more use cases around Taproot and Taro is a perfect example of that! With stablecoins on Lightning, we could list our products in USD. We could also tokenize new types of assets and trade them at lightning speed, and many use cases we can't imagine yet. Of course, this will take some time, but it's exciting times ahead!
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521 sats \ 1 reply \ @BitcoinNewsCom 13 Apr 2022 freebie
How did you enjoy Bitcoin Miami?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
Hey, I must confess i was not there, but Victor and Fanis did a great recap on it in our newsletter (see below). On a personal note, I went to Adopting Bitcoin in El Salvador, and I found it awesome!! To me, it was the perfect conference size: not too big, so you can take the time to meet and talk to people, not too small so you meet a lot of new people, with people from all around the world, with a good balance between technical and business talks. And witnessing Bitcoin adoption first hand there was an unforgettable experience. Plus we got to surf perfect waves in El Zonte, so I guess this was one my best trips ever!
Our tech team went to Bitcoin 2022 in Miami to shake some hands, bump some fists, listen to the most brilliant bitcoiners, and toss some merch.
The two trends were without a doubt Mining and Lightning. With a dedicated stage and a high proportion of the exposition booths, mining definitely seems to be a thing in the US. Mining companies were everywhere, from hosting facilities to Upstream Data and their amazing BlackBox, which allows you to mine Bitcoin at home while avoiding divorce at the same time.
Lightning-wise, this year conference confirms the ever increasing shift of exchanges embracing Lightning, with Robinhood announcing their Lightning integration a month after Kraken officially announced Lightning-enabled withdrawals. On the main stage, Michael Saylor noted that “[he] think[s] every crypto exchange, if they’re going to remain viable and competitive, they need to build Lightning into their exchange”. Well, we couldn’t agree more!
Jack Mallers’ annoucement of Strike integration into a great proportion of Point of Sale softwares outlined how Bitcoin and Lightning can be used as a more efficient payment network, without even the need to touch bitcoin (the currency) for end users. Interestingly, the news was also the starting point of a very needed debate regarding whether the Lightning Network is ready to welcome thousands of new merchants. As Rene Pickhardt highlighted, Lightning might still be too unreliable as of today, which could result in bad user experience for both merchants and customers.
I fear when it comes to reliability that even with optimally reliable payment flows we still may not be able to compete with what @jackmallers calls the "boomer wazzzzup networks"
The topic of reliability was also addressed during the fascinating Mobile Wallets Bitcoin In Every Pocket panel, where CEO of Breez Roy Sheinfeld highlighted how hard it can be to create an easy-to-use Lightning wallet, notably due to Lightning being a liquidity market still in its infancy, both in terms of liquidity volumes and liquidity management tools.
Last but not least, Lightning Labs announced a new Taproot-based protocol they’ve been working on in the past months that will allow for the creation and transfer of assets on Bitcoin and Lightning. TARO - for Taproot Asset Representation Overlay - leverages the new Taproot script tree to commit data to the Bitcoin chain and track the transfers of arbitrary assets, both fungible and collectibles.
🤝 The conference was also a great place to connect and meet in meatspace our ⚡-friends from Lightning Labs, THNDR, Galoy, Voltage an so many others!
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533 sats \ 5 replies \ @fiatjaf 13 Apr 2022
When are you going to implement LUD14 and LUD15 for seamless withdrawals?
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22 sats \ 2 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
Just stepping in to say congrats on cliche, seems dope!
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @fiatjaf 13 Apr 2022
Thanks, it's my tribute to Anton.
Since you didn't answer my question here's another one: how do you feel when people praise LNMarkets for doing DeFi on Bitcoin and assume it is noncustodial and uses some magic p2p cryptographic smart contract to work?
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2 sats \ 0 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 14 Apr 2022
Good question, it does happen! I tell them that it's not what they think it is ;) To my knowledge, we never promote concepts like doing DeFi or non custodial magic. We just say that we use Lightning for instant trading, and that on LN Markets, you take less risk since you trade directly from your wallet and only leave custody of your funds when the position is open.. So it's not DeFi and I have doubts that any of DeFi is truly Decentralized.. However, what we want to build is non custodial financial products on top of Bitcoin. DLC could be an option, and we're happy to explore any other leads we can find!
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6 sats \ 1 reply \ @afalol 13 Apr 2022 freebie
Soon TM, i need to follow the spec
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @fiatjaf 13 Apr 2022
What is this now? You're the wrong answerer!
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523 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 13 Apr 2022
  1. What's something you believe about the future of Bitcoin that no other Bitcoiners agree with you on?
  2. What features are missing from lightning that would make running a futures and options platform easier?
  3. Your newsletter is great. How much of a time commitment does it require?
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1131 sats \ 3 replies \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
  1. Good question! I have several contentious opinions, not sure all Bitcoiners would disagree with them though.. For example:
  • self custody is really hard and most people don't want to manage this burden and prefer to take a custody risk instead
  • such current low fees on Bitcoin can pose issues in the future
  • I agree with René that Lightning needs to be more reliable before thinking of bringing it to billions
  • people seem to like NFTs, and after all, bitcoins are the original NFTs.. why not push more NFTs on Bitcoin, like on Counterparty?
  1. We would love to have channel factories, it would certainly make our node management much easier. Also, stablecoins and tokens on Lightning would be great to offer new products.
  2. Woh thanks, I write it, much appreciated! In our team, Fanis is also a contributor with excellent technical topics. In aggregate I would say around 1 day per week. There's so many things going on in the Lightning ecosystem and on Bitcoin twitter that the trouble is often to make it sufficiently short to not be cut by gmail.. I also like to do interviews of Bitcoiners, and hope to do more. It's not easy to get them, but I find them very valuable. For example, I found Lyn Alden's interview excellent. She's great to have taken the time to answer our questions
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 13 Apr 2022
Thanks for your answers!
Can you describe the typical user of lnmarkets? I don't understand most financial things or who uses them, what motivates people to use them, etc.
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1026 sats \ 1 reply \ @romain_rouphael OP 13 Apr 2022
We have users from more than 120 countries, awesome to see the power of Lightning in that respect.. Initially our users were mostly here for the tech, because it the first platform to leverage Lightning for payments, so there was a lot of curiosity as to how this would work I guess. Actually even nowadays, people still find out about us and like the instant login / trading experience.. Month after month, we have more and more serious traders, used to trading on FTX, Bitmex or others, that joined the platform because the fact to trade straight from your wallet, and keep custody of your funds when you don't have a position running is important. Finally, we have more and more people who find out about Lightning just because they heard about LNM and want to try it, which is the best reward we can get.. We love our users, because they use our products of course ;), but mostly because they share plenty of ideas, push us to build a lot of new stuff, and are patient with us when there's a technical issue, for example when depositing takes time due to pathfinding issues..
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 13 Apr 2022
Thanks!
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513 sats \ 2 replies \ @wae 13 Apr 2022 freebie
Which team will win the champions league?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @romain_rouphael OP 15 Apr 2022
My heart wants Real Madrid to win so that Karim Benzeam wins ballon d'or. But my reason tells me it's gonna be Machester City this year. Epic semi final ahead!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @wae 15 Apr 2022 freebie
I also think Manchester City will win this year... And i also think Benzema will never win the ballon d'or... Not that he doesn't deserve it... But there are a lot of interest involved in that trophy
10 sats \ 1 reply \ @ideasourcing 13 Apr 2022
THNDR is in the right place. Sats are the future. I'm sure you are building APIs that help regular game developers to connect player points/achievements/loot/inventory to sats. What difficulties do you face when you approach the developers. Are they pressured from top bosses or investors to refrain from putting sats into their games?
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11 sats \ 0 replies \ @koty 13 Apr 2022
That's a question for another time and occasion, dear sir.
LN Markets and THNDR are different companies, although good buddies and building on LN.
I took notes for Desiree Dickerson in another AMA.
Appreciate it tho.
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505 sats \ 2 replies \ @creativowinder 14 Apr 2022
Hello @romain_rouphael, do you have any information about the options in LN Markets
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @romain_rouphael OP 15 Apr 2022
Hey, yes Bitcoin options are on Testnet now, so you can check them out here in the tab Options: https://testnet.lnmarkets.com/ Also, if you create a new account, you get 200k sats to test them. We are going mainnet next week! Meanwhile, in order to familiarize yourself with options, we have prepared information, available in English, Spanish and French, here: https://docs.lnmarkets.com/docs/faq/trading_options.html
Let me know if you have any more questions on Bitcoin Options!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @creativowinder 15 Apr 2022
thank you very much @romain_rouphael
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Kathleen_Croteau 23 Jan
How many lawyers do you have?
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