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i got back into bitcoin recently and decided to move the contents of my old wallet to a new SegWit one and look into using lightning.
To open a lightning channel i have to stake £170 up front though which is crazy, how are people in poorer countries supposed to do that?
or even here. poverty is on the rise, a lot of people are living hand to mouth and just having that kind of money lying around isnt a thing.
i like the idea of bitcoin but i worry it doesn’t scale well.
Add to that that virtually nowhere accepts it. The value of bitcoin comes from its use as a currency. if it doesn’t have that then it’s entirely speculation.
oh well, i have £2k in there and i’m not turning it back into fiat. I’ll spend it if i can or ride it all the way to 0 if that’s the way it goes
edit: if BTC does hit $1m a coin as the hodlers hope then that would amount to $2000 to open a lightning channel (or more realistically $2400 as electrum wouldnt let me open a channel with the supposed minimum 0.002 BTC, i had to make it 0.0024). I hope that the minimum amount to open a channel will be updated long before that happens though, but i guess we’ll see
There are no hard coded minimums. Some providers may demand a minimum commitment, but there’s nothing to stop people in poorer regions from opening smaller channels, especially between individuals. Any business attempting to operate in the region will have to work with that.
There is also a lot of work being done on… I think they call them channel factories? Might be off on the name, but basically create as many channels as possible in as little space as possible to keep it efficient and minimize costs for individuals.
An infinitely growing blockchain will inevitably fail by centralizing. Crypto-currencies as they exist today are doomed, but the protocols and tech created now may hopefully inform the design of something that is useful as a currency.
Also, high transaction fees make it useless for small (normal, everyday) amounts, so it can only be used as a store of value. It’s really more analogous to gold or a stock, with the one significant benefit that it’s harder to steal than gold and can’t be lost stolen institutionally.
i got back into bitcoin recently and decided to move the contents of my old wallet to a new SegWit one and look into using lightning.
To open a lightning channel i have to stake £170 up front though which is crazy, how are people in poorer countries supposed to do that?
or even here. poverty is on the rise, a lot of people are living hand to mouth and just having that kind of money lying around isnt a thing.
i like the idea of bitcoin but i worry it doesn’t scale well.
Add to that that virtually nowhere accepts it. The value of bitcoin comes from its use as a currency. if it doesn’t have that then it’s entirely speculation.
oh well, i have £2k in there and i’m not turning it back into fiat. I’ll spend it if i can or ride it all the way to 0 if that’s the way it goes
edit: if BTC does hit $1m a coin as the hodlers hope then that would amount to $2000 to open a lightning channel (or more realistically $2400 as electrum wouldnt let me open a channel with the supposed minimum 0.002 BTC, i had to make it 0.0024). I hope that the minimum amount to open a channel will be updated long before that happens though, but i guess we’ll see
There are no hard coded minimums. Some providers may demand a minimum commitment, but there’s nothing to stop people in poorer regions from opening smaller channels, especially between individuals. Any business attempting to operate in the region will have to work with that.
There is also a lot of work being done on… I think they call them channel factories? Might be off on the name, but basically create as many channels as possible in as little space as possible to keep it efficient and minimize costs for individuals.
You are very close
An infinitely growing blockchain will inevitably fail by centralizing. Crypto-currencies as they exist today are doomed, but the protocols and tech created now may hopefully inform the design of something that is useful as a currency.
Also, high transaction fees make it useless for small (normal, everyday) amounts, so it can only be used as a store of value. It’s really more analogous to gold or a stock, with the one significant benefit that it’s harder to steal than gold and can’t be
loststolen institutionally.