Although people mostly pay attention only to the price (which is logical because they are only interested in profit), China was a much bigger problem not only because of price manipulation, but also because there were those in the West (especially in the US) who thought that China has too much influence on mining, and that there is a lot of environmental pollution because they mainly use coal.

If none of these factors are present anymore, I think the overall picture that Bitcoin is controlled by China and its dirty industry will start to change. And as for censorship in China, I think they have brought it to the highest possible level, although any intelligent individual may try to be smarter than the system, but most are still afraid to oppose the government.

Too big to fail is actually the contrary of what the reality is. When you grow too big then it is unexpected for you to keep going with just finances. Amazon or Apple or Tesla can keep on growing, why? Because they can sell stuff forever, specially Amazon and that is why I understand them growing bigger and bigger.

Obviously finance world is different, you could make as much money as you can from there, but eventually when you grow to a level where you have so much money, eventually the profits can't continue forever.

Let's assume that you make 2 billion dollars a year profit, if you keep doing that for 10 years people may consider you not great, they want you to make more and more, and eventually you go into more and more debt to build more and more real estates but eventually you will not find anyone to buy it, it is not a car, it is not a phone, it is a house, people tend to keep their houses and not buy many, most can't afford to, and certainly not in billions. This was basically expected to fail.

It was already answered above. Basically yes, more fees or just simply more transactions at a low fee, could probably cover the electricity and channel opening costs.

Keep in mind opening a channel isn’t as crazy expensive as you might think, after all it’s just a normal Bitcoin tx that currently costs <1$ to get mined.

I know node operators that have channels open for years at a time and routed thousands of transactions in that time.

I would not speculate as to why they did it, but it is only important that they did it, and in fact did us a great service, because someone wanted to admit it or not, China has always been a hidden danger for Bitcoin - communist methods and human freedoms never could function together.

First off I'd like to say that I agree with you, Bitcoin and Tulip Mania have nothing to do with each other.

To me, what really resembles Tulip Mania is CryptoKitties NFTs's rush, which is still not completely out btw, the daily trading volume reaches millions of USD sometimes these days. The similarity lies in the fact that both, tulips and kitties, are breedable, and people buy them not simply to possess and admire, or get get some kind of status among their friends, but hoping to make money on a unique and desirable strain.

As far as I can see, this is a matter for China and their banks, and I really doubt that the whole company will collapse just like that, and that the Chinese authorities will not do anything. There is speculation that the company rejects, but if it cannot remain operational and repay the debts - I do not see what is the other logical option.


The company offers debt repayment over a multi-year period, but it is speculated that it could go bankrupt by the end of this year - unfortunately, as always in such situations, the highest price is paid by small investors. Yet this situation hasn’t arisen recently, so I’m a little surprised that the Chinese authorities have allowed (and I don’t believe they didn’t know what was going on) the whole thing to escalate to this point.

The good thing about Bitcoin is that the Chinese have practically banned it (trading&mining), so I don't believe that bad news from China can be used for a new FUD.

The original Tulip mania was one gigantic price bubble,which popped and the tulip prices never reached the same level.Bitcoin price is going up and down,while maintaining a price growth in the long term.
There were multiple price bubbles in the history of BTC,but all of them popped and the market price recovered and gained even more value after that.There's no room for comparison with the original Tulip mania,which happened in the Netherlands a few centuries ago.
NFTs are the next "shiny object" that will attract all the "financial gamblers",pump&dump traders and speculators seeking for "the one big hit".4 years ago,ICO tokens were the same thing,now the NFTs took over.

Could someone explain to me why REALLY the tulip mania happened? I mean in order to understand if bitcoin is like tulip mania or basically like any other bubble back in the day, we need to understand why it happened.

If you have some kind of important knowledge regarding how those kinds of indicators might be helpful in some kind of way, you may need to explain a wee bit more better.

I do believe as well high prices are still whitin reach and can come way faster as we think....

I think the hobbyist class nodes will sometimes be run altruistically.  But I believe most of the professionally run nodes will look to make profits.  The thing is the lightning model allows for ways to make money as a node that the base model does not, really.  AND running a lightning node is a very different model to make sats than running a mining rig.

For example, a wallet provider like Acinq can change for various services with their Phoenix wallet. Channel setup fees, and then a bigger first hop fee since they will be the first node on any route.

Bank/merchant nodes are incentivized for customers to use their nodes to save them on merchant fees (VISA).  So they have like 3% baked in before they charge a fee at all.  So I could see those being cheaper.

I think there are tons of things to see play out here.  How often does a particular use case need to settle to the base chain for example?  The more it does, the more I would expect those nodes to charge.

One other thing that makes lightning different.  The "low fee" is not the only advantage it offers the buyer and seller.  Instant settlement is also a key benefit to a small retail merchant.  Like McDonalds in ES.  Seeing the terminal go green means the money has changed hands, and the deal is done.  The base layer does not have that property.

Take an authoritarian government as an example, like North Korea. The internet there is censored, but even if it wasn't, your activities have to be approved by the government.

But, we shouldn't go that far. In order for the whole world to adopt it (A.K.A. global adoption), the governments have to approve its usage. But, a currency that requires even more energy as demands increases means that it's not environmental-friendly, assuming the energy does not come from renewable sources of energy. Thus, anyone could use this as an excuse to not adopt Bitcoin.

That's what they say.
 

You mean if they both do the same work? Obviously, they do, but using “dirty” energy will not sensitize someone to use it.

It'd be too dumb if governments approved a currency that damages the environment if its demand increases.

One of the greatest parts of Bitcoin is that it gets advantage of the humans' greed for the common good. The miners will prefer using a renewable source instead, because they'll increase their profit.

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! 

Miners secure the network by keeping the cost of attack high. If many miners suddenly leave, the hashrate drops and it becomes cheaper to launch a 51% attack.

Nodes keep the network big, so it's harder to launch sybil-based attacks and not one can monopolize the network. In big block scenario regular users can't run their full nodes and have to rely on big servers that could be run by mining companies and be easily regulated, like for example demanding KYC.