Many Bitcoin mining companies have large Bitcoin holdings, and as far as I know, none of them have found really compelling ways to earn a return on those assets yet (counterpoint: they may not ever need to).
However, as more transaction activity moves to Lightning, miners may become increasingly dependent on channel open/close fees, and in turn may miss out on all the fees which accrue to routing nodes on the Lightning Network.
Is it possible that one day a majority of all fees paid for Bitcoin transactions are paid to LN routing nodes rather than Bitcoin miners?
If so, wouldn’t it make sense for large miners to put some of their Bitcoin to use on the Lightning Network and earn some fees in return while neutralizing a threat to their future revenue?
I understand that it’s difficult to be a profitable routing node operator today, but miners have both the capital necessary to take a shot at it, and the threat of revenue shortfalls if they don’t.
They also have such slim margins that little improvements can make big differences in the sustainability of their business.
One final data point which gives me hope that miners could be profitable is that River has earned ~$100k to date (from their Lightning report) for routing payments through their nodes without even prioritizing revenue (they prioritize payment reliability).
I wouldn’t be surprised if a miner could earn an extra $100k/year right now… and a few orders of magnitude more as Lightning activity scales.