Oddbean

The sentiment of this post and the replies seems to have become pretty much consensus - "sadly LN just isn't practical for every day life". This is just wrong actually; and sadly this goes to confirm the story that was told to outsiders by silicon valley VCs for years to pump their bags : 'bitcoin isn't useful, nobody ever uses it LN is a joke'. In this comment on reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/lightningnetwork/comments/1fxmokx/when_do_you_think_lightning_will_go_mainstream/lrl42tk/ I give the reality: when bitcoin is not persecuted, LN works and thrives (albeit it remains fairly niche - but that's fine!), and it's a *much* better payment system than you think. The idea that it's not practical for ordinary businesses because they have to balance channels is a perspective that lacks nuance; this is not 2018-2020! It's far easier than you might think, again ABSENT MASSIVE PERSECUTION, to actually use LN in commerce, nowadays. (Btw in that reddit thread i missed some other uses, like flights ... even $1000 payments are fine on LN nowadays.) nostr:nevent1qqsxnz5rx9da8jh6trmlqkyh6flp9j76646tlqkezsw9z2vk3sn8nkgpremhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet59upzpckv7l8jqspl8u4y54dn9rcduwlrs4v2040nxce0m2h0cunvrj8tqvzqqqqqqyu54m4z

No, that misses nuance. You can be self custodial of keys but use infrastructure so that you have to trust others on privacy, for example. From merchant side it's more complex but decent tradeoffs have been developed there, too. You can make the argument that self custodial bitcoin full stop (i.e. not LN specific) is not viable for genpop, that is a real argument with some basis but it definitely isn't an argument that it shouldn't exist as an option, of course.