I think you *want* an alt flippening.  From listening to what you say.  Seems like you want to "stick it to the arrogant maxis".  And you could be right.

I see some differences in areas of support/resistance.

I see decent local support between 40500 and 41500 reaching back to a couple higher volume events in June and July.
I see the lower end of that same action providing really good strong support between 37000 and 38500.

And the high side there is fairly strong resistance at 50k-53k.

With the way we are acting off the 50dma test i would say the bias is more down than up sadly.

Nice bounce off 50dma.  Terrible volume.

I am not that good at charts... But on the daily don't we need to bounce pretty close to ... um... here?

I *think* this is us about to bounce off (fingers crossed) the 50MA on the daily...



Or will it pierce it?

That rage head on the weird dildo bandit is... ...weird.

Maybe they don't need more bitcoin as much as they need the bitcoin they have to go up in value?

This is a very interesting question.  I do not know, but I assume the IMF already has ES by the balls debt wise.  Seems to me what the IMF does is enslaves "developing" nations with debt.  Loan them money with all the beautiful cantilon effects that the "leadership" of the country reap, and their end of the deal is to keep cranking out bananas, or coal, or nuclear power, or coffee, etc (all the while using the right "partners" in these businesses).  But now they are doing it to pay back the loans.

This is actually one of the reasons why I think Bukele might actually be a net good actor (or maybe I am a rube?) because of all the things he could do to try to stimulate his country financially he picked the hardest one for him to personally benefit from.  We live in a world where he is proudly announcing that his whole country is buying lots of Bitcoin in amounts which certain llamas, for example, probably have in hot wallets on change addresses.

The main way he has to benefit from this is to ACTUALLY enrich his country.  Or I guess he could start skimming with Chivo.  And I do expect some sort of sales tax sort of thing ends up in the mix.  Then again he's pioneering a way forward, not only for all the developing (enslaved by the IMF) countries but even for the big dogs...   They did the deal SO FAST.  It's as if he knows that if he has a shot to break out of this debt jail he is going to have to run as fast as he can in the dark while the spotlights are sweeping the other ways... Just in this case that looks like mandating BTC, and hooking up miners to volcanoes ASAP.

I hope he is generally wearing a bullet proof vest.  And mostly it is body doubles doing his speeches.

(I just opened a 10 million sat lightning channel to IBEX in your honor.  Some day it might be worth 1k USD!)

I have given this some thought.

Things depend on what we call a participant and how the distribution of them looks.  Here are the sorts of participants as I see them:

1.  Bank nodes
These may actually end up BEING banks, but we will also see Lightning Service Providers in this role.  Examples are the Wallet of Satoshi node.  Or the IBEX node which I believe is processing the Chivo payments.  These nodes are big, and deeply connected.  They are the scary "banks" that "Blockstream has replaced the miners with".  And they are correctly identified as hubs.  These are the ones the big blockers will point to when they are arguing that lightning centralizes control of Bitcoin.  In the future I believe actual BANKS will also have nodes like this.  Western Union, and Wells fargo better be spinning up BP/LNP nodes RIGHT NOW if they want to remain relevant.  Rarely would an individual run a node like this, but Alex Bosworth's node probably classifies.  I personally do not see them as evil, or negative unless they take over the entire network, which I think is unlikely.  These nodes can see large traffic in both directions.

2. Merchant nodes
These would be big "takers" of liquidity like Bitrefil and other places bitcoin is SPENT.  Eventually, companies like Starbucks might end up spinning up their own nodes once they realize this is a better return for them than having a service provider handle it.  Hard to say... some businesses will likely run their own, but for a while I imagine many businesses that TAKE bitcoin will use the services of an LSP.  These nodes will also likely be BIG and well connected HUBS.  Eventually I envision large retailers like grocery stores, and big box places running their own nodes just because of the amount of money moved around as well as thin margins.  They also have an incentive to be able to capture the data of their customers directly. "2%off if you are connected to our node!"  It could be advantageous for merchants to have a direct connection to customer nodes. These nodes will see more incoming than outgoing traffic.  I can even see big merchants becoming LSPs.  Your grocery store also becomes your one of your banks so to speak.

3.  Non custodial LSP nodes 
These are unique.  Wallet makers like Breez, Phoenix and Muun makes apps that allow users to run Neutrino nodes on clients like phones.  These wallets currently handle all lightning stuff in the background.  They open a channel (or more?) on behalf of the customer.  Presumably they are using their own nodes which are sort of a subset of the #1 nodes up there.  Again, these are well connected HUBS.  But the users are not really nodes but dead ends on the network.  The business model for these LSPs will be to charge fees on the first hop.

4.  Hobbiest/Pro routing nodes
This is what I run.  This is a generally smaller node with strategic targeted connections to the network.  They can be run for several reasons.  A computer hobbyist with a rPi will run them.  Self-sovereign bitcoinners that want to "be their own bank" and preserve their privacy might run them.  Idealists who want to keep bitcoin as decentralized as possible might run them.  I think they are quite important.  These are the nodes that keep the network from ONLY being run on commercial grade nodes and captured.  We might be motivated by making a little profit for routing, or like me motivated to provide low/zero cost connectivity between 1,2 and 3 as well as the ability for user to user connections.  I personally connect to several of the above nodes as well as rings of peers to keep the network as distributed as possible and drive fees down.  It is hard to imagine that this will ever be more than a minority percentage of the network, in connectivity, and liquidity.  But i do think enough of us will have a palpable effect on the overall network.  We are the X degrees of separation that will route around the big powerful hubs, thereby forcing them to be better network citizens.

5.  Dead end users
This could be the majority of users. These are users who use a custodial wallet (arguably not really lightning users at all, but customers of lightning businesses), or a non-custodial wallet that does not route at all.  So these are the dead end spokes on the hubs in 1, and 3 (and maybe 4?).  Since they do not route payments they do not really have an effect on the network other than providing velocity and liquidity for the routing nodes to handle.  These "nodes" will handle way more outbound transactions, but will also process "Venmo" type user/user payments as well as refunds.

To your point, I think #4 is the lynchpin for how fees end up working.  If there are enough of us providing low fee connectivity I think the cost for payments could be kept very low or even free for the archetypal "coffee transaction".  Small transactions from customers to businesses, or from user to user could find lightning pathways that cost very little and do not even have to touch some of the hubs.  I would guess we see the hubs being involved in transactions that are big enough that it becomes hard to find pathways between the idealists.  But my node has enough inbound and outbound liquidity that I could route payments approaching $10kUSD at today's prices.

Anyway.. it is VERY interesting in my opinion... and we are still in the infant stages of it.  It will be fun to watch! 

Thank you!  And yes, Bos is killing it. I imagine he is actually making money running his nodes as well.  My humble little node is actually one of his "BOS" rated nodes.  I think I recently made it into the double digits, I was literally tied for 99 I think. lol.

I am glad folks like him can monetize their routing.  His fees are actually pretty high...
per tx: 1.000 sat  $0.000464888
per sat: 0.002500 sat  $0.000001162219

I imagine he is actually routing an occasional transaction that is MORE expensive than the base layer!  A $1000 transaction would cost more than $2 I think...  But then, why not use the base layer for a 2.2mm sat transaction.  And he is charging a premium for actually routing those payments.  He also has a amazingly high threshold size on his channels... I feel like the last time I looked he wanted ~ 16mm sats?  And although I might like to have another 16mm channel (I only have one), I doubt I would want to open it with Bosworth just because of the fees...

I am encouraged there is a low fee movement taking hold with us more ordinary nodes.  I believe it will benefit the network, and that is a good thing.  And I agree with Rene Pickhardt that zero base fees is a VERY good idea.  Not because I am against people making money... but because it really supports the idea of micropayments, and streaming payments.  I would also like to see a threshold.  Like <50k sats no fees.

I am starting to see lots of transactions to Podcast.info that are between 1-5 sats.  And a single sat base fee would possibly cost the same amount that the listener is sending.  I charge 0/0 on that node.

In a way it is an interesting problem for wallet makers.  A $100 lightning network payment could be free, or it could cost $1.  And you don't know what you've paid till the payment is sent.

Anyway... rambling now.

Well I have done lots of wild fee experimentation.  But right now most of my nodes charge 0:base 1:rate.  And a few are 0:0

The more i think about it, the more I think low fees will make the lightning network... particularly base fees.

Thre are several metrics available.  1ml.com keeps a running total of public nodes and channels.  But the flip side is the LN has a not public side as well.  The WoS node alone represents a massive amount of users as to all nodes for custodial service providers.  And neutrino nodes with a single channel are all over the place too, and it's hard to say how many there are.  Even the end user does not know what channels he has open to where as those apps manage all that behind the scenes.  I suppose it could be possible to analyze traffic to help determine...

Well it means that at least from my teeny little vantage point lightning network USE is increasing exponentially.  I could be an outlier, but I doubt it.  I have added a few channels recently, and have dropped my fees, but I do not think either of those things has a huge impact.  Moving my fees around does not seem to change the traffic much (which is interesting).

But traffic on the LN is sort of opaque.  So i can only really look at the data I have.  And that data STRONGLY suggests use is going up.  The number ot public nodes and channels has been increasing somewhat parabolically for months and months.  This site shows some data, and it all suggests serious growth:  https://bitcoinvisuals.com/

And none of this takes into account opaque or private nodes and channels, as well as custodial use.  Which includes almost ALL the LN phone apps. Strike, WoS, Chivo, Bluewallet, Muun, Pheonix, Breez etc etc etc.

But that use going up also accounts for why I might be seeing my traffic explode. 

I cannot say for sure (feature, not bug) but I would say it is quite positive.

Block 700000 soon.  Cool!

When I first spun up my lightning nodes in 2019 they would possibly route 2 or 3 transactions (not my own) each month.

In 2020 they would process 2-5 transactions a week.

In early 2021 they would do 20-50 a month.

For the last week I am seeing HUNDREDS of transactions go through a DAY.

I think the market cap is an interesting metric, but WIDELY misunderstood and misused.  It is also easily manipulable, and not consistent. 

Just in this last crypto dump we saw bitcoin's "market cap" lose ~100 billion USD.  But how many coins sold did that take?  And how much would the NEXT 100B take?   What would selling a similar percentage of ETH or XRP do to their market caps?

I think Float and Depth are WAY more important!

When I first spun up my lightning nodes in 2019 they would possibly route 2 or 3 transactions (not my own) each month.

In 2020 they would process 2-5 transactions a week.

In 2021 they would do 20-50 a month.

At THIS point (9/21) I am seeing HUNDREDS of transactions go through a DAY.

Trying to decide if this embarrassing Monero drama is just normal bullshit or a psyop.

Legit speculation IMHO.   But i will take it one step further.  The powers that be have only fairly recently realized that they cant stop what's coming.  And they can't develop their "Safe, Central Bank issued digital currency, with a built in tax system for those who need to be taxed etc" in time to beat bitcoin.

In fact, I think they are probably freaking out that one of the most important prongs in their current attempt to take over the world has been dulled by the upstart Bitcoin.

And they are going to do everything they can to discredit it, and damage it, and hack it, and break it etc.

And they will lose.

We are at the "fight" part of the Ghandi quote.