due to risks of chargebacks, ID scammers and card cloners such services are high risk. which is why no payment merchant will offer a client(website) to convert funds that do not belong to their 'client' (the website) straight to bitcoin. because the client is the website not individual customer. and if a customer scammed. the website escapes with the bitcoin. making the payment merchant at a loss because they are not directly connected with the scammer.

EG
customer wants to buy a TV via YOU, uses credit card with payment merchant(not you). then YOU supplies TV to customer. and payment merchant gives bitcoin to YOU.
customer chargebacks payment merchant. so payment merchant loses fiat AND btc.
also payment merchant is not you so has no records of a TV being sent, thus cannot show evidence to cancel the chargeback.
also payment merchant never got anything from you directly. so double loss

for risk aversion it will always be a 2 step process due to AML/KYC
meaning you have to receive the credit card funds of many customers to make the funds yours, then you convert them to btc using your credentials

ok ill highlight it for you
LN has dual signing... thus allowing as you say for the user to broadcast a settlement. if the second party ransoms them. to get out of the 'system' rather than paying up to the demand
BUT
LN should ensure the second party has some collateral too.. which will ensure both sides sign each new payment ethically. thus the user doesnt require broadcasting as soon as a second party tries to ransom them. because both parties continue to work together ethically due to both having something to lose if each side doesnt agree to sign a new payment.

EG - no ethics no collateral from ransomer
franky1 deposits 1btc to multisig 2AbC5...
carlton deposits 0btc to multisig 2AbC5...
2AbC5... contains 1btc (ethically meant for franky1)

franky1 require carlton to sign if franky1 wants his 1btc back.
carlton refuses to sign unless franky1 hands over 0.5btc.
they are deadlocked
carlton walks off never signing because he lost nothing and wants to screw franky1 over leaving funds locked hoping franky1 gives in later

now imagine - no ethics but with collateral from ransomer
franky1 deposits 1btc to multisig 2AbC5...
carlton deposits 1btc to multisig 2AbC5...
2AbC5... contains 2btc (ethically 1btc meant for franky1, 1btc meant for carlton)

franky1 require carlton to sign if franky1 wants his 1btc back.
carlton require franky1 to sign if carlton wants his 1btc back.
carlton refuses to sign unless franky1 hands over 1.5btc.
franky1 refuses to sign unless carlton hands over 1btc allowing carlton to have his 1btc.
they are deadlocked
eventually they sign 1btc each and stop communicating because carlton doesnt want to lose his 1btc. they stop trading/communicating

now imagine - ETHICAL and collateral from both
franky1 deposits 1btc to multisig 2AbC5...
carlton deposits 1btc to multisig 2AbC5...
2AbC5... contains 2btc (ethically 1btc meant for franky1, 1btc meant for carlton)

franky1 require carlton to sign if franky1 wants his 1btc back.
carlton require franky1 to sign if carlton wants his 1btc back.
they agree fair payment for fair services/products
they continue communicating and trading for days, weeks months

thus dual signing allows trade, and collateral allows eventual agreement so both dont lose. ethics allows continual trading/communication

lastly you are trying to promote LN as a bug free, perfection right now. even though it has not been completed..
its like your promoting cars that can fly will never crash before one is even built.

one software doesnt need to prevail and decisions should not be based on the economic majority.
lets explain:
economic majority.
day one coinbase has NO coins. day two 500,000 people deposit 1btc each into coinbase.
day 3. the people have no vote. coinbase has a vote to a total of 500,000 out of ~16m right now (3.1%)

is it fair that a corporation has 3.1% and each customer does not even have 0.00000625% each, but instead no vote at all. due to coinbase having the funds under coinbase keys?? so coinbase does the deciding

having more money is meaningless. the amount of funds someone has, has no relevance to the diversity, distribution and security of the blockchain.
eg satishi himself has over 800k bitcoins. yet he runs no nodes, no miners and has no impact on bitcoins security right now. he has not been involved since before 2011. emphasis: he has no impact on protecting bitcoin as it stands now.

P.S: dont get me wrong if it was based on economics i would have more votes then many people. but that does not mean its a fair excuse to change security, diversity, distribution. because funds does not secure bitcoin.. nodes and mining does.

consensus compromise
todays proposed consensus.
    core wants 1m base 4mb weight 32 critical limit
      BU wants variable base 16 critical limit
      XT wants 2mb base 32 critical limit
classic wants 2mb base. 32 critical limit

while no majority is established they can all run at the same time because the current 1mb rule fits all proposals because under 1mb data is accepted by them all.
none of these proposals are a controversial fork, all proposals are consensual.

they all want something to change. so its not about killing off all proposals and then have one king. its about compromise by coming to a consensus.
EG BEFORE december 2015 it was
   core wanted 1mb base 32 critical limit
     BU wanted variable base 16 critical limit
     XT wanted 8mb base 32 critical limit
classic wanted 8mb base. 32 critical limit

EG AFTER december 2015 it was
   core wanted 2m base 32 critical limit
     BU wanted variable base 16 critical limit
     XT wanted 2mb base 32 critical limit
classic wanted 2mb base. 32 critical limit

and the compromise was 2mb base. where IF everyone actually coded this compromise everyone would be on the same level, and there would be majority acceptance of 2mb with no disruption once the majority of nodes upgraded to their favourite brand of that consensus

we thought core would after agreeing to this, would finally write an implementation so that the 2mb can go into affect.
but then they decided to throw a spanner in the works.

instead of segwit 2mb base 4mb weight to stick to consensus while also offering segwit. they back tracked to 1mb again
with
   core wanting 1m base 4mb weight 32 critical limit

which core now wants to become a dictatorship by killing off the other implementations so they dont have to compromise and dont have to uphold their initial agreement.

which is lame because they pretend in a year or so to "maybe" implement: 2m base 4mb weight 32 critical limit, but they want to kill off the competition that is holding up their: 1m base 4mb weight 32 critical limit

the even funnier part is.
users, nodes, merchants, miners never had a single say via economics or node count that 1m base 4mb weight is the desire in 2015.
instead they went on a R3KT campaign to make sheep jump into the wolves mouths by prtending the wolves were in the other direction. (ye core devs are funded by R3 too)

in short all core need to do is make 2m base 4mb weight 32 critical limit and then ALL implementations have what they want and core also gets segwit. with no dictatorship.

due to consensual compromise

yep. and it seems hyperledger is centric on identification. where users register (possibly their social security number), which is tethered to ALL their medical, banking, border crossing, computer and internet use.

which will double highlight the requirement of 'middlemen' knowing all peoples business and being involved in all decisions. making people more aware of the fact they have less control of their 'identity' and 'assets' then they thought before.

which will make people look for an alternate to the future fiat system

in regards to the "hashing" algorithms (sha256).. quantum computers are not going to be very efficient at breaking or brute forcing, compared to traditional binary computers.

however the elliptic curve is a weakness because quantum computing can be very efficient at solving this alot more quickly, compared to traditional binary computers.
we should worry less about sha256 and more about ecdsa when thinking about threats from quantum computers.

remove all the bells and whistles and buzzwords and you come to the simple scenario of:

deposit funds into a bitcoin address that has some form of signature authorisation by kimdotcom(and hopefully the customer equally), and then all payments for content are then done without a blockchain, without validation by thousands of nodes, without secure data locks of millions of asics. on a system owned by kimdotcom.
with the end hope that there have been no arguments or blackmail, ransom, abuse on that system. to have an honourable onchain transaction, when withdrawing.. that has fairly and ethically audited who deserves what, by signing the initial deposited funds out to whoever deserves it.

lets hope when offering 'offchain' solutions the difference between those solutions and other existing payment services. is that LN (and hopefully megaupload) have the sender and receiver required to BOTH sign funds to agree to a payment for content. rather than just the sender pushing or the receiver pulling.

if there is no dual signing involved in each payment then its no different than:
depositing funds on an exchange to then play around on the mysql database where the exchange controls what 'balance' the customer deserves or claim "hack and run".(pulling)
depositing funds into a bank to then play around with their database where the banks decides if the customer deserves the funds or freeze account
(pulling and pushing)

in short the risks of offchain are:
after depositing funds, one party in control of the funds can hold the funds to ransom by refusing signing unless terms are met.

this is a flaw all offchain concepts have yet to resolve. the only way to ensure ethical payments off chain. is if its always dual signed and both sides have value(collateral) to lose. that way it resolves the one sidedness aspect that can be abused

anyone admitting how many they have, be prepared to be hassled by scammers trying to be your new best friend or try linking you to stuff.

i feel sorry for anyone admitting their wealth

old news, fed reserve is deep in the blockchain creation process..
they are part of the hyperledger group who are working with blockstream.

OP's link:

then we have:
http://www.coindesk.com/blockstream-10-new-firms-hyperledger-blockchain-project/

quite possible
people can use LN as a peer-to-peer method of doing exchanges. afterall instead of buying coffee with it. it can be anything EG a different currency.

which then starts a different price market.

much like localbitcoin's valuations are more open to variance compared to centralised exchanges
much like bitcoin-OTC's valuations are more open to variance compared to centralised exchanges

ofcourse speculation cannot guarantee if exchanges done on LN will end up with higher or lower valuations compared to centralised exchanges, but we can expect there to be a variance

technically all the website needs to do is add a "availability" option. which is helpful for traders to not be pestered at work or in bed 24/7
also it helps makes face-to-face more friendly, by having a schedule/routine, which can also be used to promote meetups.

its also good to set up "meetups" so people can socialise and discuss bitcoin while simultaneously doing their exchanging face to face. saving traders time running around to multiple locations.
by having "availability" means you dont have to be a 24/7 open location but instead a once a week meetup at a cafe / pub, for instance. That way it helps to make the feel of exchanging be more relaxed and publicly acceptable. and less like a 'stranger danger dark alleyway trade' that many feel face-to-face exchanges felt like in the past.

by this i dont mean advertise meetups and conferences specifically. i just mean traders and bitcoiners be more organised and socialised to make the face-to-face exchanging a happy event, rather than the negative fear event of the past.

some people can do adhok trades by travelling to each other at different locations. or on set evenings everyone goes to one location and socialise when trading.

all by technically just adding a "availability" option

quantum computers are process for process a couple tousand times better at some solutions compared to binary computers.
quantum can solve non binary problems faster. because they are not binary logic. and normal computer have issues with non binary logic problems.

but when a quantum has to handle a binary logic problem. it limits quantum to the scope of binary logic and so the effectiveness and efficiency is not 100%

so relax.

im laughing at the hypocrisy.

other implementations have code available since last year..
even today core doesnt have live segwit code today.

real segwit code has not been running on bitcoin mainnet.
yet many implementations have been running 2mb block rule on bitcoin mainnet since last year
2mb implementations dont force blocks over 1mb. they instead accept blocks under 2mb. meaning all blocks 0byte-999kb are acceptable too

also carlton you are confusing a contentious fork with a consensus fork.
no one has proposed a contentious fork. every implementation has proposed a consensus fork. so why are you even trying to suggest contentious forks are what the debate is about.

contentious fork and consensus fork are two different things.. please research. please learn or please go back to fiat.
we already know you want to increase the number of minable units, extending mining completion from the year 2141 to atleast the years 2181. so how about you go play around with monero and mess with moneros rules.. with your friends you are loyal too.

afterall if you feel you have the right to tell others to go away, then we have the right to tell you the same too.

but anyway your post are scraping the bottom of the barrel and really running dry of valid points. so its time to just move on. i cant see you adding anything valid to this topic.

have a good day

taking gold as an example

imagine gold as box one. has its own market.

imagine gold ETF as box two. it has its own market too.
also inside box two are 4 more boxes and each box has their own market also.

now imagine you want to buy something in box two. you will NOT be handed the contents of box one.
box two only contains paper with statements saying that box two may or may not have links to something that is in another box.
but stipulates you cannot physically have the other box, you can only trade the paper statement.

box two trading does not affect the supply or demand of box one.

we should never think of bitcoin as indestructible otherwise people get lazy and dont continue protecting it.
EG one:
it only requires a hacker to use bitnodes website to find all IP addresses of all ~5200 nodes and some possible DDoS/virus tool to delete the historic data before taking them offline all in one swoop.

the chances of that being possible is low. but we should not think ~5200 nodes is a safe secure number to live with. we need more nodes to further reduce risks

EG two:
if all ~5200 nodes were running the code of one implementation, and that implementation has a bug/intentional trojan. again the whole lot goes.

the chances of that being possible is low. but we should not think one implementation is safe to live with. we need more diversity to further reduce risks.


quantum computers work differently. and can do some surprising things that binary(regular) computers cant.
but getting a QC to solve a binary computer. restrains QC into certain limitations. which only results in a QC beign 2x efficient in comparison to regular computers when it comes to solving binary logic. ASICS and the amount of ASIC running has already averted the risk QC can pose.
so relax. D-waves QC may be technically faster then many regular computers but is no way near the power of an asic, and no way near the power of all the asics mining bitcoin.

but we should continue increasing the difficulty and adding more ASICS to continue strengthening bitcoin so that other technology cannot overtake in the distant future

ETF's are not handing people actual assets.
ETF's are just an account balance, of a share, of a company, who may or may not have the actual assets they report.

ETF's do not hurt real assets. as they are 2 separate markets

LOL epic fail
"you can't have competing consensus rules running simultanously"

yet, there are already many implementations running right now.

go play with fiat and marry banker. you really do not understand bitcoin

i did address it. heck i went back and emboldened underlined it to show where your
" You know as well as I that there is no 2nd and 3rd place if you fork the Bitcoin network to a different protocol, so it's a zero sum game. "
falls apart

its not a game of 1 winner. its a game of diverse teams that should discuss and debate what needs to change and come to a majority compromise they are all happy with. this prevents a dictatorship and instead keeps the decentralized CONSENSUS, which has been rule one of bitcoins ethos

trying to claim bitcoin has always been a dictatorship and has never had consensus is your failing. but i can see why you try to assume it.. because you want a dictatorship

ill say it one more time CONSENSUS should never be baited and switched to dictatorship. otherwise bitcoin is no better than fiat

carlton wants dictatorship so that only the dictator agrees to their own rules in a circle jerk and then changes things without consent.

carlton never thinks about real consensus and a community compromise, you know real consensus. where it is not one or the other but general agreement of the rules by the majority.

carlton has lost the libertarian mindset (though im starting to think he never had it).. each day he digs a hole a little deeper and cant back up his points.
even the copyright and patent arguments he tried suggesting failed him.

cant wait for his next bait and switch argument to dig himself a little deeper
carlton you love the capitalist, corporate control of a money system. so go play with fiat. you will be happier living a 100% fiat lifestyle

did you not read the terms of github.. i pasted it in the last post.

ooooh so github now own bitcoin.. not the community, not the devs, not blockstream not even satoshi.. but github owns bitcoin?
hmm lets check that out


care to bait and switch some more until the hole your digging is so deep your cant escape?