I've been dealing with Bitcoin since pre-2013, and I've gotta say I've never seen it feel as powerful as it does on Nostr. The instant, effectively-free transactions that spring from having so many people on Lightning Addresses is like arriving on a different planet.
Most people's experience with Bitcoin payments -- if they even have it -- is a 30-60 minute wait for mining + two-plus block confirmations, and a fee that made it feel dumb to send less than $20. Most people don't want that. They don't need that. They will never care about that. Some do -- I did -- but it's a permanent minority. This is what makes lightning-fast settlements a big deal.
When normal people and businesses realize that global money transfers can be borderless, instant, free, and only take like two clicks, I think things are going to get very interesting. Still need to cover a lot of road on the privacy problem, but this already feels better than everything naked on-chain.
The hardest problem has always been making it easy for people who don't care about Bitcoin to accept Bitcoin (tender resistance) -- without requiring them to start caring about Bitcoin.
The way you do that is by making it "better than money." We're not there yet for everybody, but for the first time in many years, I caught a glimpse of how it might be possible.
I would repost this but everyone on nostr will do it because it is indeed that good. 🫡 nuff said. Thank you for your perspective ser.
It has been 7 months, so I’ll repost it for the #newbies that are #newtonostr 🏆
When #nostr clients add "zaps" lightning will be like spendable karma
> I've never seen it feel as powerful as it does on Nostr.
Idem!
With the nice exception of stacker.news, another great bitcoin-divulgative project.
Related:
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POW is too slow
Wasted energy
POW is what makes #bitcoin a commodity money whose ledger is constrained by nature.
Like physical gold is a commodity money with a ledger constrained by nature.
The base layer is not built for speed, it’s built to be very hard to fuck with.
L2+ brings speed and more efficient transactions, but without a hardened base layer, you have no real value.
EXACTLY!..👍 All these fools that think you can compromise the base layer for L2 and short term gains are idiots.
That's why #Satoshi designed the #consensus layer to rest in the hands of the #virtuous #fullnodes and #Bitcoin loyalist.
It's also why being able to run a full node must be accessible to almost anyone that wants to.
No blockchain bloat. Low #transaction #fees. Those elements are immutable for Bitcoin.
We are Bitcoin..🧡👑🗽
100% agree but we need to make it easier to use lightning without custodians otherwise we are going to regret it in the future
Celebration time again 😜 very true though! 👍 Run your own Node, folks!
Running your own node is definitely a friction point but with lightning the bigger friction point seems to be liquidity management, particularly inbound liquidity.
Many of the people using ‘non custodial mobile wallets’ such as phoenix still have to trust the company that is running the node and providing them liquidity.
The concern I have is that we are onboarding a ton of people via custodial wallets and standardizing LNURL which has incentives pushing people toward custodial wallets.
Eventually these custodians will rug pull or shotgun kyc. It is difficult to reverse this course after the fact.
does having multiple custodial wallets mitigate this risk?
Then you have to manage different pools of liquidity. You shouldnt have to say “oh, let me get my other wallet” all the time
If you have WoS and Muun, you pay from the one that hasn’t bent yet knee. When one goes down, you learn about how to open a channel real quickly.
because it is lightning, its all hot wallet risk 😅
might i suggest doing some homework on Liquid? It offers a tradeoff to keep off-chain funds offline without an on-chain footprint, it could help you wrap your head around what federation risk is as people explore fedimint
yes, and there’s that
Why do you think a custodial Lightning wallet is more popular than a Liquid wallet?
I’ve never used Liquid or even seen it in action. Part of it could just be network effect and the proliferation and improving UX of Lightning wallets. What is Liquid currently used for that would make it appealing to new users?
I use it to swap for outbound/inbound liquidity on my lightning node using things like CoinOS, SideSwap, and Peerswap (p2p) .
to be honest, it makes no economic sense to do it (which is why no one uses it) but after using lightning for a long time one tends to look for ways to mitigate hot wallet risk -- Liquid offers a solution to that
I believe the use case is still confidential transactions for large transactions
So…mainly for institutional use, whale traders, and exchanges?
That was who they were trying to market to I believe so. There were some efforts made for everyday use, but it just didn’t catch on.
What’s the best solution to manage liquidity? Any interesting projects to support there?
Most people just want low cost frictionless money, and if they are being onboarded by buying $30 of BTC experimental spending money with their Debit Card via the getalby top up, they really don't even have to care about deeper issues.
Don't make perfection be the enemy of the good enough.
💯
LNURL pushes people towards hosted/custodial wallets. It’s better than the alternative. I just wish bolt12 was more widely adopted. I dont hold lnurl against anyone. Its a tool that exists today and works. But the reliance on a clearnet webserver comes with tradeoffs.
Leaving KYC issue aside, since *all* my coins are KYC 😉 , am I right in interpreting a hot custodial wallet greatest risk is simply losing the coins in it? So a balance risk management problem.
it seems to me the major risk is that all your transactions are eventually linked to you pretty much publicly through chainalysis. This doesn’t leave aside KYC though, and since all your coins are KYC 😉 managing the data sharing and trusting custodians not to give away, sell or leak your data is the major issue for security in the future. Otherwise, yeah, losing your stack isn’t fun either.
If fees are zero and transactions are instant, what prevents users from jumping ship? Is it just a race at that point?
Sadly I think that most people will use lightning integration on their already kyc payment app when it is integrated. Most people won't care until something bad happen
Is there a way to like this tweet?
Is there an easy way to get a LNURL without going through a KYC custodian?
You can set one up with your domain using BTCPayServer
Also agree. For whatever reason is see a lot of people think non custodial bitcoin wallet is needed but custodial lightning wallet is fine. Not sure why that is the sentiment for many using lightning
Agreed. I’m not sure how we do so without people running their own nodes. Even then, channel management is not something most people will be willing to do and without proper channel management your ability to send and receive payments to your node is vastly diminished.
Lightning will always require someone else’s infrastructure, unless your wiz of course
False! Get an Embassy and connect real lightning wallets like Zeus or Spark.
This is easy and much cheaper than using custodial solutions.
Do you run your own ISP? Do you connect to your own cell towers when you travel? Are you on your own power grid?
This is what the State will go after and regulate more.
Not very excited about the catch me if you can games that are coming, but here’s to freedom 🍻
You are still bullish on the fediment aka Uncle Jim model though right? Realistically it will never be 1-to-1 with custody, having a heuristic for being adequately decentralized is difficult but necessary for us to answer “have we made it?”
yea I think fedimint is a solid tradeoff balance in the near term, better privacy and less trust then the custodial wallets that are popular today, still would like to see fully sovereign usage get easier
What do you think about Phoenix Wallet’s solution?
Bitcoin. Better than money. (Thanks to #nostr.)
nostr:nevent1qqsgvw5gdwr53uc3mjvzm6608x3m7834v8m646u6k6e3hgffdduy9qqpzdmhxue69uhkummnw3ezucmjxqhxyctjqgsgfhhxuemwtwm8kjk5uppv7uxtmp5pz4wm2dv59lxx5pfnsk98ysqrqsqqqqqpf3m33z
Frankly, it pales in comparison to the implementation on my Minecraft server. ⚡ is amazing.
⚡ On a UX level sending a lightning payment is so much simpler than traditional finance, mitigating all those input hurdles such as address and bank numbers. Of course the most powerful bitcoin lightning feature is full sovereignry. Your bank can stop your payments for no reason and demand explanation for withdrawals. Your dollars are the bank's dollars.
I am, however, concerned that lots of people use custodial wallets like Alby or so-called "Wallet of Satoshi". Call me a maximalist, but that kinda defeats the purpose of cryptocurrencies...
Don’t disagree but would argue the point of Lightning is that it’s ‘easy’. If you treat it like a checking account it facilitates the international settlement benefits Ed describes above. Never to hold anything on lightning that you couldn’t afford to loose…that’s what cold storage is for.
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