Someone in a crypto group I'm part of sent this article yesterday. I stopped reading after this paragraph:
Lightning works like opening a tab at a bar: you and the bar settle later. It is faster and cheaper for small payments, but it relies on middlemen (called hubs) who hold your money in channels and can see what you are doing. It is not the same as handing someone cash. It adds points where someone else can interfere or shut things down.
When I told him I stopped reading after this uninformed paragraph on the LN, they asked me, what is LN? Yet, he based his current negative sentiment on Bitcoin on this article.
This resonates with the article @Darthcoin just posted (#1452620). This is what we are up against. Willful and/or accidental misinformation campaigns.
The LN works. People are working on making it better, but it works.
Most people don't understand how any payment rails work.
Do you think understanding the inner workings of Visa should be a prerequisite to using a Visa card?
We need to stop focusing on winning people over through narratives about Bitcoin and Lightning and start SHOWING the world that "it works" by USING it. Unfortunately, even so-called "Bitcoin companies" are still using fiat primarily. They aren't "opting out", they're pretending to.
When companies refuse to accept fiat payments, opting for Bitcoin only, the people will quickly learn how to use LN without having to understand anything about it.
What's the point in teaching people about systems that no one is using? If SoV and NGU is what 99% of you are here for, then what problem is LN even solving?
The normies don't need to learn about it. They need someone to lead by example, which is certainly not coming from the Bitcoin community, so I'm not sure where it's going to start from.
@fiatbad does not use LN when making payments on SNs- @fiatbad only has a receiving wallet attached.
Not only does it work, but it’s also extremely private, as @supertestnet spent so much time demonstrating last year.
@supertestnet demonstrated to no-node-having monero-holding retards that they couldn't determine anything about a lightning payment.
Maybe he should have challenged someone from ACINQ/River/LN-BIG.
Fine, but that isn’t evidence that he was wrong.
Great point.
It's also not evidence that he is right.
An analogy: I can't tell you when/where someone paid with a debit card. Does that make debit cards "extremely private" (your words)?
I disagree. It's not conclusive evidence, maybe not even strong evidence, but it is evidence.
I accept the rebuke on my use of "extremely" with respect to the privacy level. The only point that I wanted to make is that it's not what the author described, where every node can see exactly what everyone is doing.
The only reason people not attaching both send and receive wallets to SNs gave is for 'privacy'.
These are people who claim to be champipns of Bitcoin.
Oh the hyporisy yet @Undisciplined sides with them and continues to troll my efforts to raise the issue of virtue signalling BTC Maxi hypocrites who refuse to actually maximise and show their use of LN here on SNs.
Lightning can offer a magnificent level of privacy. This doesn't seem to be common knowledge within the Bitcoin ecosystem right now and frankly I think we might be better off letting people discover this organically than publicizing it, lest we attract unwanted attention.
Tabs at a bar is actually a good description of Lightning. Every channel is a tab two peers are keeping with each other.
The middlemen holding your money part is wrong though. That's only an accurate description if you're using a custodial lightning wallet.
My experience with non bitcoiners is that they mostly do not even know such a thing as lightning exists.
I wonder where the author of this article got such a mixed up impression...the title is a bit of a tell: if you go to his X profile you will see that he is a bit of a Roger Ver fan. Also, he likes a shitcoin called Zano, which has forever been yelling about how it should be the coin for all micropayments.
I've never yet heard a normie talk about lightning, so my default is to think that any critique either comes from a bitcoiner or a shitcoiner, and you can usually tell the difference by whether they know what they are talking about.
And yet you constantly attack me for pointing out the hypocrisy of those here on SNs who refuse to attach both send and receive wallets and or deliberately conceal their wallet status.
If people who claim to be bitcoiners cannot be fucked using BTC/LN where ever possible then what hope is there?
You seem to think they have some grounds to not use / or conceal wallets based on the pretext of privacy...that is clearly a bullshit reason used to obfuscate their hypocrisy.
From the title I was hoping it was about ETFs. I feel like fiat games have switched focus from gold to Bitcoin suppression. That's something I'd love to find a deep dive on.
Criticizing Lightning without understanding channels is a pretty common pattern.