Tentatively climbing back up? A couple of my more adventurous limit buys didn't get filled.

You're right.

I expressed my thought clumsily. By "good parallel" I meant to make a point with those that are afraid LN means more centralization. It will also reduce costs, as peer-cloud-peer systems do: most peers don't need to keep seeding the torrent.

I also still use them, even if they're not that fashionable anymore. What I failed to convey is that they will still be ready to use, and back in high demand, if (when!) circumstances (censorship) will make them necessary again.

Oh, well, fuck off then.


(J/k hehe...)

Good parallel.

... but if some data should get censored everywhere from "cloud peer" systems, it would spread through torrents like wildfire. That is, base blockchain transfers will always be an option, no matter what.

Translation of SEC concerns: "Futures as implemented now are totally inadequate since they can't manipulate the price."

At least the way I understand it.

...and back up.

Missed the dip. Too short  
Come on, missy, do it again for me pleeaze...

How brutal, Arriemoller! 

Thanks for the summary, Peter!

It might actually be even worse than that if the transactions are not independent (and I assume they aren't, at least until the salary-in-BTC is a reasonable assumption).

However, increasing the number of channels per LN node makes the average unbalance converge to a normal (Gaussian) distribution: a bell centered on zero with a standard deviation (width) that grows with average transaction size.

The number of channels can be increased with limited (ideally null) additional financial exposure by making the channels smaller - if the hypothetical transaction slicer/packetizer is in place.

Besides, you're assuming funding a channel costs 15% of the channel capacity (30$ for 200$ capacity). I don't think this is realistic, as the blockchain related funding cost should only be a function of the number of utxos under SW regime. And it would definitely be a SW transaction.

I guess we'll see.

That's right. That's where CoinJoin-like refunding can help. Actually, I'm not 100% positive that system has been extended to deal with refunding yet, but it can and it will. You can then plan your re-fundings in advance, and pay a fraction of the fee if you are willing to wait.

I would much prefer a written source, but I do get the gist of the model, which seems indeed sensible. I would like to see some quantitative estimates on "very very richly founded". In principle, I agree that at first it could be so that you need a mammoth channel to deal with the occasional mammoth payment (or several squirrel payments), but once a system is in place that implements a kind of "packet switching" for payments, splitting them over different channels/routes, that problem will disappear. All it takes for the system to work in a quasi-steady state is the global I/O of the channels to nearly null out, which means little fresh btc need enter/exit the LN.

Alternatively, Average Joe - who runs a LN hub whose net capacity flow is negative (more BTC going out than in) - could send fiat or other low-fee cryptos into some LN-friendly exchange, which in turn would refill Joe's channel with positive capacity. It remains to be seen how the flow will be organized, although until salaries are paid in BTC I imagine normal user channels would send more than they receive on average. The net effect for Joe would be that of "buying moar", which for an enthusiastic LN volunteer (possibly politically motivated), sounds quite desirable.

<crystalball>
Incentives, Peter. With the entry cost of setting up a LN hub close to the simple funding of channels, my guess is there will be fierce competition on prices, some of which motivated by purely political, rather than financial, reasons (as in: I, for one, will start a hub as soon as it's practical). With such low-denominator price wars, and low ROI volunteers helping the net nearly for free (as full nodes already do today), I don't see how a high fee level could be sustained.
</crystalball>

Totally obsolete, not immediately.
Until at least some of your providers in turn accept LN payments, some kind of bridge to/from fiat will still be necessary, as you need to unload your channels when their in-capacity gets filled up.

I read up something about that. I guess those of us who use NoScript should have been fairly safe.

There are two CoinJoin-like solutions being developed, at least one of which is at a fairly mature stage of progress, as I understand it.

No exact solutions in the sense of optimal, shortest-metric routing. A decent heuristic is enough to get the system going and avoid a hub-and-spoke topology. How does TOR manage to create circuits?

What I'm saying now is pure speculation, but bear with me. All the users that whine about high fees should be able to put some pressure on vendors - and especially exchanges. I agree that segwit adoption is going slowly; but that's because few wallets support it. If half of the users had a segwit-enabled wallet, it would be much harder for exchanges to delay upgrading. The customers would flock to the first exchanges to adopt the new technology.

It isn't. It's in a pupal stage IMO, preparing for the next metamorphosis.

Of course accepting BCH is trivial for those who already accept bitcoin.
All BCH did is increase the block size while keeping all witness data in mined blocks.
It could be seen as sweeping a problem under the rug, or as kicking the can a few feet further down the road.

BTC is more complex due to segwit - and hopefully soon LN too - because it's evolving in order to survive the technological challenges. It's not sweat-free. No free lunch and stuff. The benefits of upgrading will be more than worth the sweat for merchants (little sweat) and users (no sweat as soon as the first user-grade wallets become available).

But why am I explaining this to you? You are a technical person, aren't you?

LN as it is now depends on transaction malleability being fixed. That's why it was designed with segwit as a prerequisite. So yes, Ibian, you are correct as far as the real current Lightning Network goes.

Unsplit BTC still with a BCH, and possibly other forkcoins, inside.

Another yummy snippet from fluidjax.

If this is confirmed, it's quite an important piece of news.
I also see this as quite bullish. Never forget: the freedom that comes with decentralization is Bitcoin's main asset.

By the way, this appears more plausible than the customary quarterly "China bans bitcoin" FUD items. There's no FUD context (or necessity) this time, so it does look different.

Clap, clap. The blocks will get bigger when they will. Let's turn our heads to the real alternative solutions. The pot is on the fire, soon dinner's gonna be served. Let's just get the big actors to come along ASAP.

Hello, Coinbase? Hello? Anybody in there?

I'm afraid it won't be much quicker for cards in euros, either.

You ECB, stop printing all those fancy euros before you call companies that help people save themselves from inflation "crappy"! 

Seriously, most of the companies that offered cards through Wavecrest have sent out emails to customers saying they will replace the cards (free of charge) as soon as they find a viable partner. I haven't received any such email yet, but it's still the weekend.