100,000 LN Nodes, $100,000 BTC price: 2021 prediction

[cellard]

Im just not so sure about Bitcoin being a viable store of value if we get permanent bad press about how the fees and the transactions are a mess for these wanting to transact. For us holders that us irrelevant, but you don't want that constant FUD on the mainstream media, so if LN solves that, it's better than nothing.

If it's not FUD about fees, it'll be FUD about something else. I'm not too worried. Bitcoin's phenomenal rally last year actually coincided with significantly rising fees. So I'm not convinced fees (or perception of fees) is a major barrier to price. In a bull market, FUD doesn't phase the market at all. As long as the fundamentals around Bitcoin's value storage properties remain intact, I think the long term trend will continue.

I also don't think LN will "solve" the problem per se. It's just one avenue to offload some transaction volume, reinforcing the idea that Bitcoin operates best as a settlement layer. I quite like what @evoskuil said about that here:

As I pointed out in Utility Threshold Property, rising price excludes lower value transaction scenarios and improves use for larger value transactions. This is however not the same idea as, "undercutting the currency use case."

Bitcoin is perfectly non-scalable in terms of tx volume, and will remain so. No increase in hardware can increase tx volume. However it is perfectly scalable in value throughput. This makes it ideal as a settlement layer.

This is neither the same as a reserve currency, nor as a store of value. Bitcoin cannot exist primarily as either. It must be transacted by individuals to exist. Layering produces a non-reserve currency that requires individual participation in validation.

The problem is when you have guys with massive megaphones in the form of twitter such as Roger Ver, McAfee and others, they can move markets, specially in a young market like Bitcoin.

In mature markets you would expect people holding huge amounts to be very informed and not fall for the FUD, but in Bitcoin you can find complete idiots holding massive amounts, so FUD will be effective until the coins are distributed among smart, strong hands. Until that happens the highs and lows will continue being massive during mania phases. Im not sure how effective fee FUD is, but it's a factor.

[player514]

Turns out my estimations of the Lightning Network's growth were underrated, I was using an outdated explorer that was listing less nodes, use this explorer for the updated amount of nodes:

https://rompert.com/recksplorer/

This is the old url:

https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/

Notice how there's 300 new LN nodes in the other url that the old url is not caching.

LN seems to be growing pretty fast, it will eventually go parabolic once it's easier to run. Right now (I think) you need a full Bitcoin node to run a node, but eventually they will make it so anyone can run an LN node without running a full Bitcoin node.

By 2021 I predict big companies like Steam, eBay or even Amazon starting to accept Bitcoin payments through a much more robust and user friendly LN. Coupled with the store of value properties which will remain as solid as always, the combination will make the price go beyond $100,000.

Your predictions are heavily contingent on the large companies using the Lightning Network, but what if that doesn't happen? Steam used to accept bitcoin, but they stopped recently due to (probably) the confirmation times. Wouldn't it be a little odd if they start accepting it again? I guess the lightning network solves any issues that Steam may have had with the cryptocurrency, but it would be odd if they flip flop around the subject.

I do see this all working out if the big companies want to use the LN, but isn't it true that the LN brings some form of centralization to a what should be decentralized currency? I swear I've seen people talking about how it brings centralization into the picture, but I'm not 100% sure on how the LN works.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, I assume you run a node too? How easy is it to run a Lightning node? It also needs you to run bitcoind, correct?

I believe a hub and spoke model for the Lightning Network would be a better set up in the beginning if the real intention was to "scale" Bitcoin. I don't mind it to be semi-centralized to be quite honest.

there will always be people who are going to run a node whether it is a bitcoin full node or a lightning node on top of it and other people who are going to use lightweight clients that use their full nodes.
just like now that there are a lot of users using Electrum than there are users running an Electrum Node.
I don't think we can call this centralization.

True, but it would be near impossible for the Bitcoin network to reach 100,000 nodes running 24/7. Plus do you know how hard it is to sync a node these days? There is a reason why users prefer light or online wallets.

Storage may not be a problem to some of you but bandwidth is for most of us.

[cellard]

OP, I assume you run a node too? How easy is it to run a Lightning node? It also needs you to run bitcoind, correct?

I believe a hub and spoke model for the Lightning Network would be a better set up in the beginning if the real intention was to "scale" Bitcoin. I don't mind it to be semi-centralized to be quite honest.

there will always be people who are going to run a node whether it is a bitcoin full node or a lightning node on top of it and other people who are going to use lightweight clients that use their full nodes.
just like now that there are a lot of users using Electrum than there are users running an Electrum Node.
I don't think we can call this centralization.

True, but it would be near impossible for the Bitcoin network to reach 100,000 nodes running 24/7. Plus do you know how hard it is to sync a node these days? There is a reason why users prefer light or online wallets.

Storage may not be a problem to some of you but bandwidth is for most of us.

It's not impossible, specially if the blockchain stays at an affordable growth rate of 1MB blocks, the hardware will always be affordable to keep the entire blockchain. As the price grows, the incentives to have more nodes will be there, since without a decentralized array of nodes the network is completely useless as it becomes weak.

But in any case, eventually to run nodes in LN you will not need the entire blockchain, but I guess it will come with a price in security, so ideally you want as many full nodes as possible. Keeping the blocksize affordable to run LN nodes is yet another reason to not have huge blocksizes.

[omonuyak]

Turns out my estimations of the Lightning Network's growth were underrated, I was using an outdated explorer that was listing less nodes, use this explorer for the updated amount of nodes:

https://rompert.com/recksplorer/

This is the old url:

https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/

Notice how there's 300 new LN nodes in the other url that the old url is not caching.

LN seems to be growing pretty fast, it will eventually go parabolic once it's easier to run. Right now (I think) you need a full Bitcoin node to run a node, but eventually they will make it so anyone can run an LN node without running a full Bitcoin node.

By 2021 I predict big companies like Steam, eBay or even Amazon starting to accept Bitcoin payments through a much more robust and user friendly LN. Coupled with the store of value properties which will remain as solid as always, the combination will make the price go beyond $100,000.

2021 is not far from now and I hope this your predictions come to pass as many of us buy Bitcoin when it was bubble in price in December thinking we would get to around  $25,000 before this time. If bitcoin get to $100,000 then the holders will be the greatest benefitiary and it will be worth investing.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, I assume you run a node too? How easy is it to run a Lightning node? It also needs you to run bitcoind, correct?

I believe a hub and spoke model for the Lightning Network would be a better set up in the beginning if the real intention was to "scale" Bitcoin. I don't mind it to be semi-centralized to be quite honest.

there will always be people who are going to run a node whether it is a bitcoin full node or a lightning node on top of it and other people who are going to use lightweight clients that use their full nodes.
just like now that there are a lot of users using Electrum than there are users running an Electrum Node.
I don't think we can call this centralization.

True, but it would be near impossible for the Bitcoin network to reach 100,000 nodes running 24/7. Plus do you know how hard it is to sync a node these days? There is a reason why users prefer light or online wallets.

Storage may not be a problem to some of you but bandwidth is for most of us.

It's not impossible, specially if the blockchain stays at an affordable growth rate of 1MB blocks, the hardware will always be affordable to keep the entire blockchain. As the price grows, the incentives to have more nodes will be there, since without a decentralized array of nodes the network is completely useless as it becomes weak.

Also true, it is not impossible but something that is more likely not to happen. How many nodes are running in the Bitcoin network today? I believe it is under 10,000 nodes? Plus are they increasing or decreasing?

But in any case, eventually to run nodes in LN you will not need the entire blockchain, but I guess it will come with a price in security, so ideally you want as many full nodes as possible. Keeping the blocksize affordable to run LN nodes is yet another reason to not have huge blocksizes.

It will not be necessary to run a node to use Lightning, you mean? That is also true and it will give it a little more of a hub and spoke model which is more efficient in my opinion.

[cellard]

OP, I assume you run a node too? How easy is it to run a Lightning node? It also needs you to run bitcoind, correct?

I believe a hub and spoke model for the Lightning Network would be a better set up in the beginning if the real intention was to "scale" Bitcoin. I don't mind it to be semi-centralized to be quite honest.

there will always be people who are going to run a node whether it is a bitcoin full node or a lightning node on top of it and other people who are going to use lightweight clients that use their full nodes.
just like now that there are a lot of users using Electrum than there are users running an Electrum Node.
I don't think we can call this centralization.

True, but it would be near impossible for the Bitcoin network to reach 100,000 nodes running 24/7. Plus do you know how hard it is to sync a node these days? There is a reason why users prefer light or online wallets.

Storage may not be a problem to some of you but bandwidth is for most of us.

It's not impossible, specially if the blockchain stays at an affordable growth rate of 1MB blocks, the hardware will always be affordable to keep the entire blockchain. As the price grows, the incentives to have more nodes will be there, since without a decentralized array of nodes the network is completely useless as it becomes weak.

Also true, it is not impossible but something that is more likely not to happen. How many nodes are running in the Bitcoin network today? I believe it is under 10,000 nodes? Plus are they increasing or decreasing?

But in any case, eventually to run nodes in LN you will not need the entire blockchain, but I guess it will come with a price in security, so ideally you want as many full nodes as possible. Keeping the blocksize affordable to run LN nodes is yet another reason to not have huge blocksizes.

It will not be necessary to run a node to use Lightning, you mean? That is also true and it will give it a little more of a hub and spoke model which is more efficient in my opinion.

The number of LN nodes keep rising, we are past 1700 now, I predict we will get to 2000 during this month at this rate, and like I said, you require a full node thus far to run a LN node. In the future this will not be the case, like I said, probably with some sort of compromise which I assume will be reasonable for the task (LN is not supposed to be used for big amount).

The number of nodes will keep growing along with the price. It's in the incentive of hodlers to have a strong network, therefore the more money held on BTC, the higher the node count. A decentralized array of nodes is important, not only node count, which is why we can't afford huge block sizes.

[BrewMaster]

that is one of the reasons why i strongly believe in the long term sustainability of bitcoin hence is huge rise in long term too. i see a lot of potential in Lightning Network as a serious way of increasing the adoption of bitcoin as a currency and that is the only adoption that matters most which also can increase the price and keep it up there.
otherwise the speculation adoption has rise but it never lasts.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, I assume you run a node too? How easy is it to run a Lightning node? It also needs you to run bitcoind, correct?

I believe a hub and spoke model for the Lightning Network would be a better set up in the beginning if the real intention was to "scale" Bitcoin. I don't mind it to be semi-centralized to be quite honest.

there will always be people who are going to run a node whether it is a bitcoin full node or a lightning node on top of it and other people who are going to use lightweight clients that use their full nodes.
just like now that there are a lot of users using Electrum than there are users running an Electrum Node.
I don't think we can call this centralization.

True, but it would be near impossible for the Bitcoin network to reach 100,000 nodes running 24/7. Plus do you know how hard it is to sync a node these days? There is a reason why users prefer light or online wallets.

Storage may not be a problem to some of you but bandwidth is for most of us.

It's not impossible, specially if the blockchain stays at an affordable growth rate of 1MB blocks, the hardware will always be affordable to keep the entire blockchain. As the price grows, the incentives to have more nodes will be there, since without a decentralized array of nodes the network is completely useless as it becomes weak.

Also true, it is not impossible but something that is more likely not to happen. How many nodes are running in the Bitcoin network today? I believe it is under 10,000 nodes? Plus are they increasing or decreasing?

But in any case, eventually to run nodes in LN you will not need the entire blockchain, but I guess it will come with a price in security, so ideally you want as many full nodes as possible. Keeping the blocksize affordable to run LN nodes is yet another reason to not have huge blocksizes.

It will not be necessary to run a node to use Lightning, you mean? That is also true and it will give it a little more of a hub and spoke model which is more efficient in my opinion.

The number of LN nodes keep rising, we are past 1700 now, I predict we will get to 2000 during this month at this rate, and like I said, you require a full node thus far to run a LN node. In the future this will not be the case, like I said, probably with some sort of compromise which I assume will be reasonable for the task (LN is not supposed to be used for big amount).

Yes but to run a Lightning node, you have to run bitcoind and sync the blockchain. I believe we have fewer than 100,000 people who want to run a fully synced bitcoind for free, 24/7 just to run a Lightning node.

I believe we will have "Lightning services" in that will not require us to run a node in the future.

The number of nodes will keep growing along with the price. It's in the incentive of hodlers to have a strong network, therefore the more money held on BTC, the higher the node count. A decentralized array of nodes is important, not only node count, which is why we can't afford huge block sizes.

No, the number of nodes will keep falling as the blockchain keeps growing in size.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.