30 sats \ 4 replies \ @pillar 29 Jul 2023 \ on: Bitcoin Lightning Node Profitability: ROI & What To Know Before Investing bitcoin
I think it is very nasty to discuss earning yield through routing in the LN in a beginners article without absolutely clear disclaimers about how 99% of amateur node runners won't earn a single sat in profits.
The lack of clear warnings might lead newbies into wasting a lot of effort and resources to only fail.
Running your own lightning node has enough advantages without the yield that we shouldn't need that hook to convince people into it.
We 100% agree!
Which is why we make this clear right throughout the piece as we discuss revenue, expenses and profits. This quote forms part of our conclusion:
Our recommendation is that you should think hard about whether you’re willing to put in the many months of learning and experimentation required to (hopefully) turn a profit one day.
Maybe your skills are better suited to something else which is OK. Maybe your Internet connection goes down all the time and so it’ll just never work no matter how much you try. Maybe you don’t have enough Bitcoin to fund enough channels. Or maybe you don’t care about being profitable as you want to just learn. Whichever way you go, just know that it takes lots of work and know this going in.
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This is how the 1% of nodes stays profitable. Noobs paying fees for "useless" transactions. The LN game is PvP, you win by taking other's sats. Nasty or not, its how the game theory of this system works.
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And the promised part of the article is behind a paywall anyway.
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Agree 100%. The OP already earned more sats in pure profit today than would be earned by an amateur LN in a month.
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