finally someone that wants to keep the topic on track
..
im a realist. so lets also look at the negative to atleast put things into prospective to have a fair balance

if you discount all the sybil nodes running on amazon, hertzner,digital ocean, ovh (>35%)
you will find the 35% of 99.9% uptime taken away. will make that 20 hour average far worse

1. IPO does not mean that a company is in trouble. it just means they want to expand.
2. laying off TEMP staff  normal1000 -> temp 3000 -> normal1000........ no drama.. standard business practice
3. if jihan wants to retire he can. take gmaxwell founder of blockstream retiring from blockstream
    take bobby lee and samson mows position change when DCG.co bought BTCC
yes people are not immortal. so learn to not get dramatic about people. instead just stick to the things that matter

the funny part is the whole. bitmain bust due to an altcoin..
funny thing is bitmains altcoin stuff is a small %
bitmains main % is mining hardware and leasing farms

all these rumours began by samson mow. but look at samson mows previous employer and look at why mow is angry(should you only want to investigate social drama stuff)

anyway the whole 'IPO delay due to jihan/bch' is old propaganda from months ago.
the hongkong stock exchange is hesitant to approve crypto companies in general
take for instance canaan... filed in may...... delayed(lapsed in november)
take for instance ebang... filed in june...... delayed(about to lapse)

bitmain filed in september.. delayed(has until march)
yes there is a actual waiting period of things that happen. its not a apply in september and get accepted same day.. bitmain have 6 months from september. there is a whole process that needs to be gone through before listing negociation period begins. so far the hongkong stock exchange has denied canaan. not due to canaan financials but purely that is crypto based and approval of a new industry would requir extra oversight and negociations and tests as it would set a precidence and template for others.


so if you are waiting for news on bitmain.. look for news on canaan/ebang... then wait for a further 4 months for bitmain
(as canaan has shown the hongkong stock exchange isnt eager to just accept a crypto IPO easily)

i personally dont think any crypto mining company will get approval in q1 of 2019. so canaan,eband AND bitmain will just do business as usual and try again for a 2019 q2-q3 round(once they all know the real objections to then fix them and counter the objections next time..... much like the ETF drama of custodial services)
.....
meanwhile current events that do actually matter
t/s15's are being delivered and hashrates for 2019 gonna rise.
prepare for the mining:market dynamics to play out

here we go again another poke at the bear from the same buddy group derailing the topic. but ill bite

WINDFURY take this as a respectful message
go actually research LN outside the scope of just asking your certain buddies.
i kind of doubt you even watched the video from the lightning developers themselves
as it has become very apparent that a certain group is becoming an echo chamber only wanting to promote the fluffy cloud and unicorn over promises of another network

if you think LN is the bitcoin network. ask yourself what N stands for in LN.. lightning is not abbreviated to BNF(bitcoin network feature).. LN is not a blockchain either. and its not something that will fail if no bitcoiner used it.

LN is not dependant on bitcoins network. it is a separate network for multiple coins to vault up and be pegged into
(the 12 decimal payments are the pegged tokens)
LN will continue to run without bitcoin.

by chainhash that is an identifier buzzword so that (lets call them) masternodes can monitor multiple chains. by knowing
which chain is which.
LN is not coded to be just a bitcoin feature. its not for just bitcoins benefit, its not to make bitcoin unique

by masternode i mean a node thats a fullnode of many blockchains not just 1
(which is comedy itself. "full node of just bitcoin will become too big" bitcoin cant cope.. but LN masternodes will be fine being full node of many chains)
its funny because if LN nodes can cope with 3+ chains then nodes can cope with 1chain.

meaning if people can be masternodes of many chains they can be fine with being it for just 1.. which counters the rhetoric of one network is 'too big')

as it has become very apparent that a certain group is becoming an echo chamber.

research eltoo factories. not with the fluffy unicorn mindset of finding buzzwords like "oh look they called it eltoo to it must be a L2 thing" (thats just sponsorship buzzwordatory games that many play to gain investment by throwing in the word bitcoin into everything. EG coinbase and circle do it. yet they are fiat businesses handling different currencies. not sole services aiming at serving bitcoin alone to make only bitcoin have unique offerings)

so respectfully
look beyond the unicorn buzzwords with a critical mindset, look behind the buzzword illusion, and find the realistic stuff.


now lets take factories
onchain                                  |   offchain
(1)user->factory(vault UTXO)  | (2)factory(vaultutxo)&factoryhub(12dec peg)
                                             |                       ->(3)factoryhub&user->(4a)user&partnerA
                                             |                                                      ->(4b)user&partnerB
                                             |                                                      -> (4c)user&partnerC
                                                                     ^                             ^
                                               each->is a step AWAY from a tx that holds a onchain UTXO


i know what your next thinking.. that partner C holds co-signature control of users initial state 2 and 3 for security..
but no. for "privacy" they dont want the factory to be part of a 3-of-3 multisig where factory(hub) sees every payment users and partners do. where it would then require factory to sign off on each state change of the channel
also user wont be able to open channels with partner A and partner B
as then states 2 and states 3 become 5-of-5 multisigs making things more complex

and partner C doesnt want 'user' to broadcast back to bitcoin easily. hense why when closing a channel 'user' has to go back to factory and factory then decides if something should be broadcast. factory would notify C if user gave factory a close request (all off chain) and 'user' only then gets to sign a (2) close state to get back to (1) if factory agrees

emphasis: user C wont get sign off control of 'users' 2,3 but would be presented with OFFCHAIN UNCONFIRMED listing of
1,2,3,4 .. purely to show taint. (requiring trust) that 'user' hasnt secretly given more of the (3) value to another channel
because C is trusting factory will notify C if 'user' was playing games in other channels with funds that are meant to be for the 4c channel.

the whole point of factories is to have the factoryhub(3) aggregate transactions(4) and re-release a non blockchain payments(3) so that user channels(4) dont need to broadcast to the network to close channels.
they simply adjust 12 decimal payments between 3 and 4 to close a channel and re-open another channel with either the same person or a different person
or then request closing the user/factory hub(3) channel. to then get to a 8 decimal state(2) that can be signed out and put back to a coin networks blockchain

yes fluffy unicorn crowd will spin the positives. of less utility requirement of bitcoins network
but learn the critical concern of such too less utility of bitcoins network

if you think you can walk into starbucks and buy a coffee where by your using a LN masternode.. then ill laugh at whichever unicorn buddy told you so.
users will end up with phone apps that rely and trust on a server(factory) to monitor the blockchain

the best analogy for you to understand is user channels are like electrum litewallets. that communicate to electrum servers. whereby the electrum server decides if it should relay the transactions to the bitcoin network.

we already had in this debate about the min fee issue of transactions not getting around and not put into mempools. and many people complain that if the fee's are not right then a tx isnt sent..
even things like bread wallet. if the transaction doesnt use segwit outputs they wont relay transactions

and yes
the factory(masternodes) will be the "severs are needed" making a network centralised" argument that they play on bitcoin.. funny thing is taking utility away from bitcoin, to avoid bitcoin being a "server for 1 chain" by
wait for it....
... using an alternative network of "server for 3+chains".......
its funny because is not giving people more control. its giving them less control by locking funds into such network that is going to be more centralised

ill word it differently
ln promoter: "bitcoin will become servers we need another network to reduce bitcoin utility to avoid this"
btc realist: "maintaining 1 chain? you want another network that maintains multiple coins"
ln promoter: "yes"
btc realist: "and these masternodes of LN how many chains will they maintain"
ln promoter: "3+, but shhhh we need to reduce bitcoin utility"
btc realist: "but LN then becomes a network of server nodes of +3 requirements"
ln promoter: "yes, but shhhh we need to reduce bitcoin utility"

again you may think that people can run up just a lightning node for just bitcoin. but lightning nodes are already being coded as masternodes that by default have code for monitoring bitcoin and litecoin (look at previous post that already has the litecoin chainhash in its codebase by default)

imagine it this way
99% of users will be phone app litewallets using factories
0.9% master users wanting to be factories to earn some income just downloading the compiled .exe as they are not tech savvi.
0.1% will be tech savvi devs that will play around and not be default masternodes but able to code their own single chain independent use nodes that dont use factories nor litewallet

and if you think you will be one of the popular factory nodes. well forget it. coinbase, circle will as they along with blockstream
have been given hundreds of millions in investment over the years and the investors want some ROI
(why do you think the gameplay of the NYA agreement happened with the 3 card trick(NYA,UASF,bilateral) in 2017 played out like it did)

im literally laughing now.
all coins are bitcoin deposits...

hilarious
you do know LN can function without bitcoin..
respectfully please do some research properly outside the echo chamber of your buddy group

so james uses someone elses software to store private keys on a offline PC.

.....
i guess james cant make his own software to do the job then

... and i think thats the biggest hole you dug yourself, tripped over and fell into.
i think we are now done and complete with why james is not satoshi.

and even more surprising. all evidence to prove he is not was provided by double timestamp
so thank you double timestamp for all your time dis-proving james as satoshi.

lets move on

coinbase and bitpay already offer shopping cart services for merchants

where they can automate swapping the btc for fiat as soon as people pat btc, or you can set it to keep all or a % as btc,

agreed.
and craigwright and ver are altcoiners.. their drama is on another coin of no impact.. no significance to bitcoin..
its more about social drama of twitter and reddit than actually affecting bitcoin

gotta laugh at some people mindsets though
'go look and get distracted by altcoin stuff, but dont you dare talk or discuss bitcoin developers'

it vaults up coins and then gives people non-blockchained non audited 12 decimal 'payments' to play with.
think about gold and bankers of 18th century vaulting up the gold and handing out promissory notes that were supposedly meant to be just as equal to gold but easier to manage. think how that played out

though squatter is trying to play the utopian fluffy positive card promoting this alternative network for the benefit of custodians(eltoo factories),,,trying to oversell why its convenient.
he is atleast starting to show he know the actual workings (finally). why subtly hinting at the flaws of the whole 'trust'/co-signed permissioned stuff

yep deposit funds into a vault belonging to an exchange. and then let the exchange(factory) hand out unconfirmed offchain promissory notes to users for the users to then have non-blockchained payments as the initial state for opening and closing channels.
where close channels are not broadcastable transactions but LN internal 12 decimal payments that need to be sent back to the factory(exchange/custodian) for the factory to choose to hand out fresh payments to users. or if the customer pays a substantial fee, broadcast back to the bitcoin network

open:
onchain                  |      offchain
userA->exchange    |                                        /> hub(regional bank) A -> user A  \
userB->exchange    |      exchange(12 decimal)  -> hub(regional bank) B                   > channel AC
userC->exchange    |                                        \> hub(regional bank) C -> user C  /

---

close:
off chain                                                                            |      on chain
                     / user A -> hub A -\                                      |    exchange -> userA
channel AC  <                  hub B -> exchange(12 decimal)    |    exchange -> userB                                     
                     \ user C -> hub C -/                                      |    exchange -> userC

---

OR
closer re-open
off chain                                                                         
                     / user A -> hub A -\                                      /> hub(regional bank) A -> user A  \     > channel AB
channel AC  <                  hub B -> exchange(12 decimal)    -> hub(regional bank) B -> user B  /                     
                     \ user C -> hub C -/                                      \> hub(regional bank) C -> user C

requiring the exchanges to have management of funds and decide on things.
each -> is one step AWAY from holding a actual bitcoin network held UTXO, whereby users are trusting the unconfirmed
taint of transactions back to the exchange

all to reduce trying to let users broadcast back to the network as much...

if people are running code thats 2 years old and didnt realise that the code they ran meant they didnt get to opt-out. bcause something is "compatible" is not consensus

having no vote is not general agreement

gotta lov your flip flops though
flip: people choose by upgrading/opting in.
flip: people chose to use core so they

flop: people dont get a vote
flop: devs can do what they like

atleast choose a mindset and stick with it
you also shown in other social dramas of your own making you hate the term "inflight upgrades" but then say you love having things upgraded without needing consensus

last hint
consensus comes from the word consent.
when things happen without consent, (no option to agree or disagree) then its not consensus

i gotta laugh at the social drama..

funny thing is its like empty drama thats 4 months out of date
1. jihan made alot of money selling off old s9 when they had value in october
2. jihan made alot of money selling the first batch of t/s15's in november (being delivered this week)
3. jihan started with 1000 staff, took on some TEMPS to cover some new projects. and is now just going back to usual
 much like how retailers take on christmas temps to cover high labour demand of a certain high labour event
4. the whole thinking that bitcoin cash caused economic meltdown of certain things/people is the biggest laugh of all

just goes to show people dont do their research and just want to copy and paste or repeat propaganda scripts from a certain group.
hint. samson mow is angry. he lost his BTCC job.. but did anyone notice how much BTCC evaporated.. nope.
he remained hush hush about his situation but is propaganda raging about other things..

but putting the social drama aside, important thing is new asics delivered this week
= hashrate rise
= market:mining dynamic/paradigm playing out
= positive 2019

scalability OF ANOTHER NETWORK
subtly saying bitcoin cant scale is subtly saying to future other network people, that want to exit the other network.. that its best not to return to bitcoins network

see the problem with that subtlety ?? banks done the same with gold in the 18th century.

thunderdome 2 may enter 1 may leave
banks gold and silver may enter silver may leave
LN bitcoin and litecoin may enter litecoin may leave

why do you think there are subtle word play terms going on, such calling data "weight"

funny part is near on 10 years of bitcoins "weight" is only the size of a fingernail bit of plastic (256gb microsd) yet the subtle wording the roadmap wants to imply to cause people to not want bitcoin NETWORK growth is that bitcoin network is heavy and expensive.

again even you are implying that cheap fee's = low demand. when infact there are many ways on the bitcoin network to have cheaper fee's than today by just having better fee control... compared to the foolish desire that people want fee's to go up rather than let scaling on network go up to cover costs at lower fees

EG instead of EVERYONE having to pay more PER TRANACTION when blocks are full.. the people with bloated transactions that spend too often to cause those fills can pay more, and those that dont have bloated transactions and only spend now and again can pay less PER TRANSACTION
todays (lack of) fee control. means if one person spams blocks.. everyone else ends up paying more

i told you (after you butt into topics to derail them into becoming social dramas)
mandated mandated mandated.
august first
contentious fork
bilateral fork

it has many names. but essentially it changed bitcoins rules without consensus.. so the words are not a trademarked buzzword but more of a description of event

if you decide your emotions are sparked by a buzzword of consensus bypass.. then thats your social drama problem

consensus bypass is a contentious fork, or what your buddies call the event of august 1st which has many names.. but you are still afraid to admit even the event(by any name)occured. even though the blockchain itself and code and even the devs admit occured

but you need to go research that

maybe thats your problem that im just not calling it by a certain buzzword.
i know your group loves to spew certain buzzwords as part of their social drama distractions from real issues, it even seems to be becoming a game where you all have to use a certain buzzword..
'ad-hom' 'conservative' 'L2'

now here is a lesson for you. if you dont like a certain topic. and dont want drama. dont poke to turn a discussion into drama. instead hit the ignore button
its easy

but if you are going to poke at something to cause drama. atleast be prepared with research and have some stats and data to back it up.. because just replying with insults just makes you look like a comedian using an outdated script of known jokes/punchlines

if a merchant accepts BTC then as a backup ofcourse they would have a QR code laminated near the cashier desk.. accepting btc = having a QR code as standard transaction etiquette .. i dont think anyones manually had to type in a bitcoin address for atleast 5 years now.

ive done hundreds of transactions with 'brick-n-mortar' merchants and never needed to manually type an address.. and thats been since 2012

but yea QR codes are to bitcoin, what magnetic strip is to debit cards.. old school backup

you seem to busy with social drama that your not researching actual things..
plus craig wright and ver are just that... drama..

im not the one who shouts out LN can handle visa global levels.
i actually downplayed the numbers to be just visa USA as a more plausable usecase for if its popular


so you have to start playing the numbers that if in lets say 5 years there becomes 189m(not drastic numbers) that before that 5th year we need to have progressed step by step up to that number. which means not waiting for 5 years and then suddenly reacting. (so far devs have made us wait 3 year and tx counts are not much better than 3 years ago (200k a day december 2015))

but one thing to take into account is that even if you think next month only 100,000 vault up. then the following month 200,000 vault up, you actually find out 100,000 from first month are unvaulting and revaulting. so thats 400,000 at month 2
then at third month 300,000 new users.. along with the 300.000 of previous months unvaulting and revaulting.. is 600.000
and so on.
its either going to hit a snag of bottleneck delays if things dont start progressing on the bitcoin main net. or people just dont bother with bitcoin because others might progress because bitcoin devs prefer slowing down bitcoin mainnet utility while raising cost

any to answer thee other point
also im not the one that shouts "gigabytes by midnight" in regards to bitcoins utility.


i am the on that is actually saying lets grow the onchain transaction count limitation progressively.. but the thing that infuriates many people is that a certain dev team want to be a decision maker of when and how..
it could be done so easily (like how difficulty adjusts based on certain parameters of blocks automatically, without needing dev intervention/delay/stall tactics
the network could grow more naturally and automatically without the "dev control" frustration

to use LN is atleast 1 deposit to vault funds up on the bitcoin network before even getting to play with LN and atleast one to unvault funds when finished playing around on LN(vaulting up with a factory to let the factory then handle the channel open/close management)
if you only plan on budgeting your money for 2 payments then its not worth it.

if you plan to avoid factories. you will end up needing to spread funds over multiple channels manually yourself. this can end up being more than 2 transactions onchain (atleast one(with multiple outputs) to vault up.. or.. multiple transactions of single outputs if opening channels at different times) and then multiple transactions to unvault the funds.

they say average users end up needing atleast 5 channels that have their funds spread out to atleast have a relatively good chance to spend some of the funds when needed) so thats like a minimum of 6 transactions onchain.

so if you are only budgeting to use LN for 6 payments.. its not worth it.

VISAUSA statistics have people that only use visa cards ~42 times a month (~1.5 tx a day) but bitcoin is not as widly available as visa. so people wont be spending as often. so lets say only 2 times a week.
so unless your planning ahead your spending habits for the next 3 weeks. again not worth it

LN's niche are for the spammers (day traders, mixers and those who do make regular payments to certain recipients)
it wont really have good utility for those that only want to buy groceries once a week or pay a monthly bill.. (unless they plan to vault up enough funds for 2-6months..

but as my previous posts suggest unless bitcoins network expands the transactions per day restrictions. expect to have to preplan funding a LN deposit for upto a years worth, once things get busier (which not many would want to do)

..
as for saying its instant..
thats if:
1. everyone on the route is online to agree
2. everyone on the route is funded enough
3. others havnt raided your channel of said route before you got to spend it yourself

of a pegged token thats 12 decimals, on a different network, that can take over a year to get just america to vault up, to then get into ln
oh and by the way, america will want to get out, move things around. and shake things up.

so before over selling LN realise its limitations.
here are the devs themselves talk about its issues
https://youtu.be/8lMLo-7yF5k?t=570

and dont even try to say its a bitcoin transaction.. thats soo 2016
latest concepts of 2018 are factories. and channels using 12 decimal unconfirmed, non blockchain contracts that can cycle around without needing to broadcast back to the blockchain.

actually
maximum weight is 4mb but there is a secondary limit of maximum weight / witness scalefactor(4)
meaning there is a limit within the code of 1mb

this 1mb limit is a pre-requisite for transactions
it is where legacy transactions have been restricted to only be within.
and segwit transactions are semi restricted to being within.

segwit transactions do not get full free reign of 4mb. part of a segwit transaction is restricted to the 1mb limit
its only the signatures of a segwit transaction that get to sit outside the 1mb limit
so an average segwit transaction where signatures = half the data of a transaction would result in ~2mb blocks
but this is in a usecase of if every transaction in the 1mb base limit was segwit and where half the transaction data was its signature
EG
if the majority of transactions were legacy then only a few segwits would have their signatures outside the 1mb area
meaning expect less than 2x

so dont expect transactions to fill up the 4mb weight as a 'norm' .. as the 1mb area is still a pre-requisite and restricts full utility.

because LN is not involved with blockchains for the actual LN payments. its pretty much just human agreement.
humans can agree on receiving coin A for coin B. by just signing LN payments of such.

infact you can do that now without LN. without vaulting up coins

heres the funny part. some say bitcoin has issues and needs LN because bitcoin full nodes dont like the blockchain..
but guess what. LN will start having fullnodes (for factories) that monitor multiple coins. its funny because if a node is supposedly unable to handle 1 chain, but suddenly able to handle 2-4 chains... then obviously the argument against the 1 chain is an empty argument

its not about jumping blocksize from small to large over night.
its not about taking a decade to convince a dev to implement just a small teaser amount
its about progressive growth over time without needing devs to decide when
EG the block mining difficulty shifts depending on block events. without needing devs to decide what the difficulty should shift to

also leaning transactions down. some devs want to blot up transactions with lots of features and even have it where a block can be allowed to be filled with just 5 bloated transactions. bitcoin should be made more simplified.
if users want complicated privacy contract stuff, then they can use other networks but if bitcoin wants to be a straight forward digital cash, then keep it as simple as digital cash

imagine it this way.
im not going to talk about 7billion users..
ill just talk about 189million americans.. why.. well im just going to use the 189m americans that use VISAUSA.. yep im not going unrealistic with big numbers of 900million VISAGLOBAL. im just using realistic numbers

189m people. imagine they all want to deposit and vault up funds.

lets take the average transactions per block
https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions
~250k a day
it would take 756days to just get 189m users into LN
and thats before counting all the users that want to get out move funds, refresh channels.

people within LN will not want to exit LN back to bitcoin in such a situation. they would end up atomic swapping to other payments and exiting to liteoin and other coins that have more scope.

this is why bitcoin needs to expand bitcoin and not just push people into LN as a way to avoid expanding bitcoin. because once on LN people wont want to return to bitcoin