Lightning network topology after blackrock (& others) ETF? \ stacker news ~lightning

Google says blackrock has $9.4 trillions 'Assets under management' My LN node says there are about 3000 BTC in 'active' channels of about 6000 active nodes -> $135 million

If blackrock were to move say, 1% of their AUM into the bitcoin ETF (94 billion), then 1% of that on LN, that would still be 940 million dollar, 6x the curent network size!

The first thing that comes to mind is that they wouldn't have any interest into putting more than the current total capacity, or they simply would have channels doing nothing because there is not enough liquidity to move from the other side.

But even then, that means they could easily open 3000BTC/6000nodes = one 0.5BTC channel to every active LN node!

Obviously, this does not account the fact that 94 more billion going into the ETF would also change bitcoin price, so we cannot compare using dollar values, but the figures are extraordinary nonetheless.

What do you think would happend to LN traffic it if were the case?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 5 Jan

They're a wealth management company, not a payments company, so it's hard to imagine why they would need a public lightning node.

Payment channels can also be private over dark networks for settlement between partners, even if they did run a node you'd probably never be aware of it.

A large allocation to public LN would be done through subsidiaries running economic nodes. It would be distributed and appear almost organic.