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I do not think there is a need to dump payment options for markets that are already efficient, although Bitcoin could make a good complementary method of payment to make it more efficient. An example of this is online shopping. It would be nice to see Amazon start to accept Bitcoin even if they do not need to.
Bitcoin should be used in markets where there is an inefficient mode of payment. As I said before the dark market payments would be very inefficient if it did not have Bitcoin payments. There are also ways to create to create new markets for Bitcoins like for example an exchange for backed frequent flyer mile tokens done on Counter Party that is tradable for Bitcoins.
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Let us pretend that everyone, that means the miners, people maintaining Bitcoin nodes and the community supported Bitcoin Unlimited. What will happen to the core developers. Will they lose their position and their influence over the development of the network? Who will take over, the developers who started Bitcoin Unlimited?
Are the Bitcoin Unlimited coders competent enough to take over Bitcoin's development?
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The Russian government might be trying to go ahead to limit the potential of Bitcoin. As franky1 said this might not affect Bitcoin but it will affect the things you can build on top or the business ideas that make use of Bitcoin. You see one of Bitcoin's biggest potential is to find inefficient global markets and make them efficient. An example of this are the dark markets. Trading for illegal items online had no reliable mode of payment until Bitcoin arrived.
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It will spell the doom for everything. Why would quantum computer using hackers try to break Bitcoin when it could break the banks if they want money. The more political ones can break government and corporate encryption. So if you think everyone is after your precious Bitcoin, you are wrong. Bitcoin is only a drop in the bucket.
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Tha safest wallet is not an online wallet. Also you have to protect your PC anyway.
Protect your pc or laptop with anti virus because there is a virus that can log almost all your keystroke.. so its safe if you use antivirus like kaspersky.. For me i dont trust online wallet because i already experience some problem before in online wallet.. thats why i try to use electrum and until now never had any issue.. Or why not learn how to use Linux? It is more secure and easy to learn. As long as you update it regularly then you are mostly safe from hacks. It also depends on how you use and secure your computer. I also have been recommending using a bootable Linux USB like Tails Linux as a sort of hardware wallet. Tails Linux already has an Electrum wallet included in its software packages so no need to install it. The beauty of this Linux distro is all outgoing transactions go thru TOR for more privacy. |
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Hey! I just typed 'blochchain.info' with google search. 1st result is: Ad - www bi0ckchein info/Wallet/Login  Be careful! Thanks for the tip. I would suggest for all the people in the community who are using blockchain.info to bookmark their site in your browser. This accomplishes a couple of things, easier access and safer browsing because you are sure it is the real website you are going to. Also be sure to enable 2FA, the secondary password, disable TOR access and do not put large amounts in that wallet. Webwallets are needed for your small, daily Bitcoin expenses. It is not intended to be a place for you to store your Bitcoin savings. |
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Well do a signature campaign, mine one earns me around 0.015 btc a week then do some clicking sites for free, and then build capital to invest in good revshares or god bitcoin sites. I am in one revshare now that earns me around 0.2 bitcoin a month in net income now, so building now a 2nd company, recyclix which you don't have to click any ads daily, that gives a 14% roi every 5 weeks for recycling waste.
This is very interesting. Can you please give us more details on how you got started with revshares? Please give us a step by step on how you did it and what happened. Also what good bitcoin sites are good to invest in? All I see are gambling sites pooling together Bitcoins to use as capital to use against the players. I am scared that the sites might sometimes bust because of being at the wrong side of variance. In your revshare how much did you invest so that you could earn .20 BTC a month? |
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LN's biggest problem is that it increases money supply. Notice that money supply means the available money in the market, not the base money supply, thus modern economy theories seldom use M0 to measure money supply, since a large part of the M0 is sitting there collecting dust without contributing to the economy activities
Comparing two cases:
1. you have 1 bitcoin to pay a merchant, when this 1 bitcoin is in transaction, it is unavailable for anyone else, so the money supply decreased by 1 bitcoin until the merchant received your coin and spent it. If he did not spend it in time, next time you must find a new bitcoin to pay him, this will create new demand for bitcoin
2. you have 1 bitcoin to pay a merchant, but your wallet operator and merchant's wallet operator opened a payment channel between them, and then you and the merchant can do any amount of trades without more bitcoin, because the amount of incoming and outgoing transactions are roughly the same between your wallet operator and merchant's wallet operator, thus their transactions basically cancel each other and no real settlement is required between them, the channel can be left open forever. As a result, you get some salary from your boss through another payment channel, and you pay the merchant through this payment channel, everything happens in payment channel, no real bitcoin is needed
I am confused. Where will this extra LN.BTC come from when the amount locked to open the payment channel is all there is represented in the Lightning Network, no more no less. Please explain what you are trying to say a little better by giving another example.
So once payment channel and especially routing is established, all the bitcoin transactions can be done with a fraction of the total amount of required bitcoin, that will dramatically reduce the amount of bitcoin demand on market and cause the value to crash
Increased money supply always cause reduced money value, or inflation. Notice that not only new coins can cause inflation, any schemes that could increase the utility of the same bitcoin by multiple times is essentially another form of inflation, this includes payment channel, fractional reserve banking, and other forms of similar schemes
But hold on. Let us assume you are correct with the inflation of the LN.BTC in the network, but do not forget that in order to participate and have funds in LN you should buy Bitcoin. If LN is successful then the demand for real Bitcoins will only go higher. Now this is where the problem of fungibility comes in as I mentioned before. Real Bitcoin's value will go up due to demand but LN.BTC will suffer from variance and in your argument of inflation in LN.BTC it might go down. The effect will be the opposite of what you are thinking because people would prefer to hold real BTC because now it is very clear in its value than lock them in LN when there is no need. |
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I have read somewhere in the forum that the lock out time if in case there is an uncooperative channel is 2 weeks. It would be stupid of the developers not to put this feature, making it possible for your coins to be locked forever. I would suggest that the person opening the channel should be able to choose how long the minimum time out is as long as it is not less than 24 hours. I believe that would be better.
if the locktime was 2 weeks thats only 2016 offchain payments are allowed if the locktime was 24 hours thats only 144 offchain payments are allowed, ill explain EG imagine we are at block 450,000 right now make a TX with 24 hour locktime = 450,144 make a 'payment' offchain, locktime = 450,143 (to keep newest relevant) make a 'payment' offchain, locktime = 450,142 (to keep newest relevant) make a 'payment' offchain, locktime = 450,142 (to keep newest relevant) issues 1) not unlimited. 2) if you make 140 payments in 30 minutes (current block 450,003 - payment lock now reduced to 450,004)you have to close channel and broadcast newest payment quick before previous tx become able to release funds 3) you and peer go offline/sleep. then its a game of who wakes up first and transmits the best tx in their favour, that has passed the timelock. 4) it is not a trustless system, it is a system based on mutual agreement. atleast talking about the flaws will help develop solutions or users knowing the limitations to make smart choices about how when and why they would use it. rather then pretend its all utopia and every tx should be done on it, always and forever I meant to say is that the lock out time only when there is an uncooperative channel is 2 weeks. Otherwise the channel can remain open as long as the individual at the other end is cooperative. As for item no. 4 in your post, I agree the system is not trustless but it is better than what something like the Ripple network is proposing. Ripple is all depending on trust that a gateway will not go away with your money. For me it is good to explore all possible avenues for scalabilty. Make the hard fork to bigger blocks the last resort because it is risky. |
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I hope that the whole of cryptocurrencies will not be regulated by the government. What will happen is it will become a playground of Wall Street and the big banks just like how it is in the bond market, stock market and all the other regulated markets. They will impose limits and laws that will impede ordinary people from taking part in it. That will block us from creating opportunities for ourselves and it will make them take and have control. I would prefer to have small scammers run their scams than have the bigger scammers regulating us.
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So TKeenan what solution do you propose? Do we want to boycott both Lining Network and SegWit because these solution are not exactly a pure breed of bitcoin?
Do we have real options to enrich BTC without these upgrades? At some point bitcoin needs to be upgraded...
Simple. Make 4MB blocks tomorrow. Still Bitcoin. Always Bitcoin. 4MB will let the network expand for another 3 years maybe. During those 3 years, we should work on some nice alternatives to scaling. But for now, 4MB is a very conservative little adjustment. Only a few lines of code to remove a limit that was put in long after the genesis block anyway. This is my opinion on the scaling debate. There are certain individuals or group of individuals that have their own agendas and their own self interests threatened by how slow the Bitcoin economy is growing. Those people have invested in Bitcoin companies and only to see them become stagnant. So they blame that the Bitcoin economy is not growing fast enough because it cannot scale, so there is the need for larger blocks and that the immediate effect to this is an expanding Bitcoin economy. But is it really that simple? Maybe those individuals are right but maybe they are also wrong. Why? A hard fork comes with great risk. Ethereum is a very good example of this. I also believe that up to a certain point, the people who want bigger blocks want control over the development of Bitcoin. |
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by the second party not signing. you cant have them back. because it requires dual signing.
by this i agree the second party cannot simply "take it from you" without your signature, but you cant take it without theirs
IIRC there is a timeout period after one party initiates the closing of a payment channel. Please take this with a grain of salt, as I'm unsure and this would be a *stupid flaw* to enable the possibility of indefinite state of irresoluteness. I'll do some research on this once I find more time. I have read somewhere in the forum that the lock out time if in case there is an uncooperative channel is 2 weeks. It would be stupid of the developers not to put this feature, making it possible for your coins to be locked forever. I would suggest that the person opening the channel should be able to choose how long the minimum time out is as long as it is not less than 24 hours. I believe that would be better. |
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.....
the funny thing is, if revealing the honest truth hurts. then there is something those hurt by the truth want to hide.
if you feel the technology is sound then be honest and show what it can and cannot do. rather then circle jerk the utupian dream of perfection purely to give some rep' points to the business conceiving it.
i personally do see the positives of where LN can be useful. but i also see the flaws.
there is no point "selling" the usefulness before its even usable, but highlighting the flaws can help fix the issues to make it useful.
Speaking of flaws there could be another potential shortcoming in the system. Since the Lightning Network requires the locking of Bitcoins to open payment channels and then unlocking or "withdraw" them when you a channel, would this not send a heavier load on the blockchain and it might even cause a bottle neck? For example LN reaches a half of Visa's transaction and then for some reason a panic selling in the markets start and thousands of payment channels close at the same time to unlock people's Bitcoins. In that scenario, what kind of strain will it bring to the whole Bitcoin network? Will it clog it and make it unusable for an "X" amount of time? |
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The more and more I understand the Lightning Network the more I can see its similarities with the Ripple Network. Also it is better because it might have all the functionalities and none of that XRP tokens that are mostly held by the founders and the company behind it. The system on how to send value in the network is also better in the Lightning Network. Ripple uses financial institutions as gateways to transfer value to the network while LN uses its payment channel system.
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This was the second largest hack after Mt.Gox! Hell, there hasn't been any news on how the "hackers" got in. For all we know the same scenario could repeat itself. The prospects for Bitfinex are quite bleak at this point. I loved trading on there for many years!
That should worry everyone because Bitfinex could be either hiding their negligence which they could pay large fines if proven guilty under tort law. Or it is really an inside job with or without the exchange's founders/owners knowledge. That is a bigger scandal if proven true and it would force Bitfinex to close down the exchange. The safer option was to let all the talk and rumors die down and try to save the exchange and pay their customers. If I was using that exchange I would prefer to stay quiet and get paid. Then leave and never come back. |
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Interesting arguments from both sides, Carlton versus Franky and the OP, about LN's "currency" being an altcoin or not. For me technically it could be but it is not. But then again it could really be. What some see as bad, I see opportunity here. I view the Lightning Network as something like a pseudo bank account in which it can be made and used as a bridge between blockchains. Like a decentralized exchange.
Thank you OP for pointing out that LN could be really an "altcoin" because it just opened the possibilities of what it really is. I am very excited on how this all works in practice.
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I would like to know if anyone of you earns 0.1 BTC per week or even more? Is this possible and what is best way to earn it? Your experiences, suggestions and advices are very welcomed.
Simple. Get a real job or two jobs and then buy Bitcoins with your salary. It is never easy making a living in the real world. You have to work hard if you want to make it in life. Or you could offer your services online for Bitcoin payment. It will take time to get some clients but if you try hard enough they will come eventually. What are the skills are you proficient at? |
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....
This could manifest itself in a much more complicated way than simply VISA, PayPal or UnionPay. Depending on the state of the Bitcoin ledger at any point in time, no Hub could consistently always be the cheapest option. The Hub would have to be routing every single other payment in the ledger in order to be able to offer the most efficient routing and in turn the cheapest price.... unless they were the only Hub.... where they would lose incentive to be cheapest anyway... it's a free-market paradox, essentially.
I have another concern about the Lightning Network. In the beginning there might only be a small portion of of Bitcoin users that will start using it. Will this not cause a problem in the fungibility of BTC? There might be a scenario where the price of Bitcoins outside LN will be higher than the coins "trapped" or "hindered" in LN. So it might create another market for LN Bitcoins versus "real" Bitcoins. What do you think? |
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Tipping uber drivers would be really good in helping Bitcoin achieve the most coveted "circular economy". To make people spend Bitcoin, a person must earn it by providing a service, as his or her salary and earn them by selling goods. Bitcoin's adoption problems are not in the spending part, it is in the earning part. How can a massive amount of people earn Bitcoins when Bitcoin paying jobs are almost non existent?
OP's idea is a good one and I like it but I'm sure other people will have other ideas too. So please post them here and let is talk about it.
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...then a monopoly Hub simply couldn't take control, because Hubs are in free market competition. Banks are not in free-market competition. Your point is invalid.
You do not know that. Individuals can group together to serve their own agenda and self interests. Just like in Bitcoin's cartelization of mining, a cartelization of payment hubs is possible. Reality knows it. If the barrier to enter the market is identically low for everyone, a monopoly is literally impossible. Mining isn't like that post-ASIC, but the only hardware needed to run a Lightning hub is going to be general purpose. Ok maybe the comparison with Bitcoin mining is a mistake. But I know you get what I am trying to say. It will not stop certain individuals or a group of individuals to form a large payment hub in the Lightning Network. It will be more efficient and channels more reliable because they could have the advantage to take in more people to open more payment channels with them. If you think deeply about it then maybe the network would perform better if there are only a few but large payment hubs. It will make the routing of payments easier and more efficient. |
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