Why I am so bullish on the lighting network \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Ok first of all it makes sense to think about the current version of instant payment. Credit cards. Why isn't a credit card enough?

Well, we all are forced to use credit cards in our daily lives and to risk our funds in the bank. If you think about how credit cards are even designed it really makes you wonder why on earth would I put all my sensitive data on a piece of plastic readable for everyone finding the card. Leading to unauthorised transactions which skyrocketed the last decade.

From a merchant perspective the support of credit card payments comes with two mayor disadvantages:

Banks function as gatekeepers

High fees for accepting credit card payments

Well... if only there was an innovative solution for this problem.

The lighting network.

The lighting network as a layer 2 payment protocol on top of Bitcoin addresses these problems. It is intended to enable fast transactions among participating members and enhances the privacy and speed of Bitcoin payments, while maintaining the same level of security. There is no gatekeeper. Anyone with a $50 smartphone can send money to any institution accepting lightning payments without any restrictions and without any record of the payment being made. The fees are usually a few sats, not even measurable in fiat currency at the time. What is a fee of 1-5 sats? $0.000169 to $0.00084? Close to nothing. Compare that to the current fees merchants are being charged for credit card payments and try to convince me merchants are not interested in adopting lightning payments. Compare the amount of possible transactions per seconds. While payment processors like Visa and Mastercard are able to handle 65.000 transactions per second, the lightning network averages 1.000.000 transactions per second, making it the most efficient payment system to be ever existed.

Privacy by design. No record of any payment on the lightning network is stored anywhere. Do you think the same applies to your current banking institution? I believe it does not.

238 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullcount 30 Sep 2023

You're not exactly correct that there is no record of LN transactions stored anywhere. Its more accurate to say, The record of a tx isn't public by default.

My own node's database has a record of every TX I've made for example. Also, every transaction that uses a public channel causes a change in liquidity that can be detected via probes. These liquidity shifts can be correlated to payments.

Still better privacy than CCs tho.

266 sats \ 0 replies \ @Michelson_Morley 30 Sep 2023

Welcome to the party! :D

Isn't it incredible? I was blown away too by the sudden possibilities, what new applications made, it feels like a gold rush that eclipses not only the bubble of web3, but even the gold rush of.. the real gold rush!

I'd warn about assuming lightning is private by design though. It's not that simple, yet. The great @TonyGiorgio (lightning developer) talked about it in an interview last year: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/state-of-bitcoin-lightning-network-privacy

Or have things changed? I'm no expert!

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia 30 Sep 2023

If you think about how credit cards are even designed it really makes you wonder why on earth would I put all my sensitive data on a piece of plastic readable for everyone finding the card.

Yes, it's crazy giving out all the data "voluntarily", each earning or spending, with whom and where, everything is being watched, yet people are so used to it, then it became a norm, scary.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @carlosfandango 1 Oct 2023

Bot alert