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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @1sats 28 Aug 2023 \ on: Are current lightning nodes killing new small nodes? bitcoin
Thank you for speaking up. Others have already discussed the cost of opening channels and the cost of liquidity, so I won't go into that here.
The problem is that after 15 years of cheap money, people aren't accustomed to paying to maintain their checking accounts anymore. Can you believe, 15 years ago, we had to pay $10 a month to keep a checking account open in the US?
Since Bitcoin is all about being your own bank, you have to bear the costs to maintain and operate it. With Lightning, you have to pay over 1000 sats for the account opening fee and lock in 1M sats in the channel. Or you will have to pay a hefty fee to the LSP so that they can offset the opening costs.
For educational purposes, you should use the testnet. Kids can play with toy money on the testnet without worrying about losing anything.
There are some islands in the Caribbean where you still pay 5 dollars a month to have an account and about 0.5 $ for every transaction you make through your bank!!!
Imagine paying your salary and 5 premiums and taxes per month as a business. You end up with 5 dollars a month fee and all these costs.
Imagine growing to a team of 5 employees or 10 employees. Your transaction costs increase like crazy.
And when you want to send some funds to Europe or US you get the 15 dollars transaction costs of international fees again.
I once caclulated that if you would send 100 dollars over and over again to some businesses after just 200 times your whole 100 dollars would end up in the pockets of the banks. Isn't that incredible? With a transaction fee of 0.5 dollars per time in just 200 times transacting 100 dollars all the dollars end up in the pockets of fiat banks.
Being your own bank, means somebody has to pay for the roads. You can have your bank but if there is no road to another country or island, there is no bank actually. We have to watch this. There needs to be competition and the fees have to remain reasonable.
We cannot go to the Fiat Banking system where you pay too.
The only great thing is that with Fiat banks you money loses value on top of it. Because it is being printed like crazy. Luckily in Bitcoin we do not have that.
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