Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon1395 | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin is regulated as hell

And extremely centralized in the so-called Lightning version. Due to ridiculously absurd requirements of the Lightning layer (bidirectional channels on L1, locking funds in advance, solving NP-hard problem thousand times per second a scale etc.) everyone basically resorts to using very few centralized entities as a pseudo-bank, who issues virtual paper, IOUs, which which wallets trade on L2. Basically all negatives of the banks and all negatives of crypto-tokens combined, with no positive sides at all.

Okay this was what I thought would happen. I looked into Lightning a few years ago and found the whole concept to be quite dense and not something that a "regular person" does. I don't have a strong opinion on the Bitcoiner vs Shitcoiner debate and have been happy to participate in BTC/BCH/XMR style chains, and the ETH/SOL/EVM-style chains as well. But I felt like Lightning ended up acting a lot like the Ethereum L2s with weaker guarantees.

It's still pretty affordable and not-hard to run your own Lightning node; The pseudo-bank hosted wallets people use (e.g Wallet of Satoshi) is purely out of convenience.

The real lesson is that most people don't care enough about the underlying risks - they care about convenience.

How much BTC do you need to run a node? And what are the failure modes if the node goes down or becomes network unreachable or something? I'm not trying to be critical, just curious myself what happens if I run a node. Would be happy for any resources you have on hand if that's too much for an HN comment.

I’m with you. It’s too complicated to run self-custodial node. I’m an engineer and can do it and yet I gave up after a year of constant baby sitting my node.

Hopefully future versions of Start9 or Umbrell make it easier. Or some hybrid solutions like Greenlight/Breez or Spark.

If I'm not mistaken, running own Lightning node would mean opening channels to every single merchant you want to trade with AND those same merchants would need to open a symmetric channel back to you with the same amount of locked funds. And then during the transaction this system would need magically solve traveling salesman problem per each transaction in the system, taking into account that after each completed transaction system state changes. Oh, and those channels are all on L1, which has 7 tps on best days.

Lightning can't work distributed, by design. It's a silly architecture. I guess the problem that the proponents of the alternative were slightly mental, sealed the fate of the BTC. It really should have increased block size, multiple times by now, and don't bother with stuff that can't work.

Wouldn't repeated block size increases lock out "normal people" from participating too? Hosting a local BTC node is already hard, and completely impractical on a mobile device.

Nope, because SSD/HDD tech has evolved in capacity while the costs have gone down.

If I'm not mistaken, you don't need to host a full node to access and operate BTC network. But hosting full nodes certainly adds resilience and speed to the system.

Point 1. Increasing node storage size would not be very expensive, people are buying NAS storage for fun, some of the more idealistic ones would certainly do that for BTC. BTC chain today is less than one terabyte. Even increasing chain size x10 times would still mean that it would fit on a single cheap consumer HDD. Increasing it x100 times would require something like a 6-8 HDD stripe, under 1-2 thousand bucks in price. People do that for memes or hosting torrents every day, all across the globe.

Point 2. Increasing chain size by a lot would mean that the amount of full nodes would inevitably drop, lets say by half, or even by 3/4. Still a lot would remain and the system would be very decentralized. While with lightning crutch the decentralized part is clogged permanently and is unusable for any serious currency replacement use, while users are forced on a broken by design centralized Lightning.

In my opinion the answer is obvious, if we want to have a truly decentralized currency, and not some casino replacement for gambling and law avoidance.

you just need to open one channel to another node (better if well connected) and all your payments will be routed through that node.

If you have multiple channels you have more routing alternatives and can choose the best one for every single payment.

So, for a normal case where multiple people want to trade with multiple other people/merchants we would need a centralized node with connections to every single one of the clients and every single one of the merchants (so a "bank"). Both clients and merchants need to open a channel on L1 (so it's goddamn slow or expensive) to that node and freeze in the channel the full amount of tokens they would wish to spend with every single peer or merchant in the future (so basically a "deposit" of all or at least a lot of the funds in a "bank"). And every merchant would need to do that too for the full amount of anticipated transactions. And then this system will work on L2 somehow, if the system will correctly calculate paths and and sums in all the channels there are. To exit the system, channels must be closed on L1 (slowass or expensive) and if there are not enough funds in the channels, create new channels with more funds, again on L1.

Even in the most absurdly centralized scenario, the system is practically unusable as soon as there are more than a handful users. Or people just stop pretending and use custodian tokens, aka bullshit IOUs.

Only for tax purposes in the US. If you're worried that your speech will be censored by the government (importantly: corporate social media can censor you on their platforms but can't censor your BTC usage in most developed countries), then declaring BTC for tax purposes is probably the least of your worries in most places.

As far as I understand as a non-US citizen, the recent presidential bills anchor your (US citizen-) right to deal in bitcoin between private entities. So the "good" kind of regulation.

There is a world outside of USA, and there is even a world within it too - where you can just do things.

Why do you think i'm in the USA...? I am in the UK and it is impossible to buy bitcoin without regulations.

You could just earn it on nostr...

bingo

With "impossible" you mean you can't use Tor Browser and fire up Robosats to buy Bitcoin via Revolut or Wise?

What if I need to buy something on Coinbase Commerce?

What has that todo with anyhting? For Nostr you need bitcoin (lightning) and there is plenty of ways to acquire/buy it anywhere in the world. No need to limit yourself to coinbase.

P.S: anon1395 is likely a new, mere troll account. Well played.

That's like saying "what if I punch myself in the face, why does my face hurt?" Try different ways. Don't buy on Coinbase Commerce.

I recommend hodlhodl.

Not everyone there is a bitcoin boomer. You'll find plenty of monero users and things that are a bit more serious than that.

It is noteworthy that zapps are based on lightning (which is Layer-2 for bitcoin), and similar in privacy as monero (and instantaneous).

Does lightning work now? A few years ago, I remember they had quite some difficulties. Maybe I should brush up my knowledge.

It is OK for small amounts like paying a coffee or a few cents.

Not reliable for larger values.

What's the "meta" like to find payment channels? That's the thing I found weirdest with LN, I needed to find a channel with enough funding. I presume the custodial LN providers just have their own payment channels?

There is a sweet spot between custodial and self-custodial wallets: "non-custodial" wallets like Phoenix Wallet or Electrum. You keys, your coins - but expect higher fees (which are still way less than CC providers or other payment processors). No need to manage channels yourself.

Interesting, they manage channels for you and charge some fees? Makes sense, I'm not averse to paying for convenience.

It works but requires technical knowledge. I zap (on nostr) every day

Lightning is not anywhere near as private as monero. It's a band aid at best. If it was actually private it would get banned and suppressed like monero.

Then let’s write a nip and create a Nostr client that uses monero. What are you waiting for?

Already here: https://github.com/moStard-org/moStard

This is just an ignorant take on the technology used: https://x.com/SuperTestnet/status/1917510496376197446

Monero has other things working for it though, like the absence of liquidity issues you might face using Lightning.

It nowhere similar to Monero in privacy, because it was never private to begin with. Please read: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/state-of-bitcoin-light...

And attention that Monero isn't the only privacy coin in town, but it is the one that is without doubt more attacked by governments due to its privacy. You don't see the same treatment for neither LN nor bitcoin, instead you see governments supporting it. There is a big difference.

Your link is from 2022 - blinded paths are now here in lightning. Async- and trampoline payments are around the corner. The article is heavily outdated.

I am involved in Lightning and run my own node - it is pretty much private enough for all sorts of micro payments for content creators. Not private enough for organized crime to move large sums, agreed.

You also forget to mention the 51% attack monero recently suffered. Lightning is bitcoin based and way more resilient to that.

By all means, here is a study from 2024 documenting the hard facts about lack of privacy and lack of resiliency: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030859612...

That 51% attack on Monero never happened, despite much noise and headlines saying initially otherwise. You can verify this for yourself.

The paper does not state what you make it out to be (it sees theoretical privacy-lowering attacks, but not as you state it "lack of privacy"). Practical attacks are not even proven.

And it - too - does not look into trampoline payments. Trampoline payments are a new feature that are not yet in a BOLT standard, but tried and tested in beta and used i.e. by Phoenix Wallet or Electrum.

It isn't just "theoretical", those are feasible attack vectors.

Anyways thank you for mentioning Trampoline payments, I've learned something new.

>I am involved in Lightning and run my own node - it is pretty much private enough for all sorts of micro payments for content creators. Not private enough for organized crime to move large sums, agreed.

I don't get it. It's like saying bank transactions are private enough for all sorts of micro payments for content creators, but not private enough for organized crime to move large sums. Technically true, but...

It's either private or not.

You do not even acknowledge that monero payments take minutes (plus waiting for X confirmations) up to hours to finally settle. Lightning payments are instantenous, and take seconds (!). While moneros privacy might be higher that lightning, it is completely unusuable as a web micro-payment network.

I don't think you ever used Monero because payments are settled in a few minutes and the user gets fast notification of incoming transaction.

So that point you raise is fake. However, if you want to pick a more realistic reason then complain about the fees which are still high when doing for example a payment of 5 cents and the fee will often also be 5 cents whereas it should be free.

Anyways, I'm not even a fan of Monero being used for that purpose. The conversation here was about privacy and the lack of it on some virtual coins.

There is no point discussing with you, you twist every argument around - "...payments are settled in a few minutes and the user gets fast notification of incoming transaction." is not even contrary to what I wrote, you repeated my point. Minutes to clear a transaction vs. a second (sometimes a couple of seconds) is not even close to comparable. Anyway, I am out of this thread.

Your claim was:

> It is noteworthy that zapps are based on lightning (which is Layer-2 for bitcoin), and similar in privacy as monero (and instantaneous).

Entire subthread was 99% about your lightning "privacy" claim, which was incorrect.

The difference between minutes vs seconds might be interesting or crucial to many, but that wasn't the most important thing you've been called out on.

Hope this helps with understanding the other guy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com