The problem isn't volume, it is latency. It can take 30m for a btc transaction to settle. That's a nontrivial amount of volatility to exposure yourself to.
AH crypto don't ever change or do you're a fucking waste.
> It's like using a personal check - until the bank clears it you're at risk.
Which is 100% not true, it's not like a personal check. You are only at risk if:
* your counterparty decides to try and cheat you (despite knowing they will lose even more money if they attempt to screw you and you notice, so some game theory is involved)
* you are not watching onchain for a period longer than the monitor period (typically several days)
* you have not elected to have someone else monitor on your behalf (in exchange for a small cut of the "profits" if your counterparty tries to cheat you)
My point being - it's nowhere near the same as a personal check.
* Bad actors exist and will do this with checks or lightning, game theory applies to both
* It doesn't matter if you're watching the chain, you've already transacted with the buyer
* 3P Escrow is not unique to Lightning and is sometimes used with checks too
It does, but with lightning, as long as you are watching the chain periodically, you are guaranteed to not lose money. The same cannot be said for checks.
> It doesn't matter if you're watching the chain, you've already transacted with the buyer
It does matter if you watch the chain - this is how you determine if your counterparty is trying to close out the channel with an out of date state (at which point you can submit an onchain transaction that corrects the problem + collects a penalty from your counterparty).
> 3P Escrow is not unique to Lightning and is sometimes used with checks too
Watchtowers are not anything like escrow. It's simply allowing a third party to submit penalty transaction iff your counterparty attempts to submit an out of date state. They do not take custody of your funds.
You can make a lightning transaction, drain your bitcoin wallet before it verifies, and no amount of watching the chain will get the seller back whatever they traded you for that transaction. Just because you identify the fraudulent transaction before it finally verifies doesn't mean that the fraud wasn't committed. Same with bad checks.
I thought you were talking about 3P escrow, because watchtowers are even worse than escrow in fighting fraud, for reasons outlined above.
No you cannot, again, that's not how it works. You commit funds to a channel on chain before you can spend funds in a channel. I don't think you understand how lightning works.
Lightning is even dumber than I thought - and I already thought it was DOA.
1. You send BTC to PayPal 2. PayPal sends equivalent dollars to the merchant.
But what is "equivalent"? What is the price of BTC at any given moment? It fluctuates a lot and you can't "lock-in" a price without waiting minutes (as opposed to milliseconds in other financial systems). So between the time that you sent dollars to the merchant and when you sold the coins you are exposed to risk of holding BTC.
Lightning does not help with this.