The announcement touts the tax advantages, but isn't quite clear on how that part works.  I'm assuming it's not a taxable event because of instant conversion, so there's no potential to make a gain/loss on the market rate?

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And what straws would you be desperately clutching at if they had made LN with just 8 decimal places?

As always, I'm terribly sorry that people in the real world want to develop LN.  It's an awful shame that no one else is living in your fantasy dream world who even wants to attempt to implement any of the ideas you think are so great.

Actually, that's a lie.  I'm not sorry and it's not a shame at all.

What's going to be the deal with this and compliance? Is the person proposing it operating a company that'll run it? It is effectively an exchange in itself.

I can imagine banks spraying out an army of kittens at the idea of this.

It's still BTC, the millisats are just rounded off at the moment.  It could be other coins too, technically, and then the transaction settled on the first layer would be on that coin's chain.  But since the announcement makes no reference to Litecoin, it's fair to assume they're only talking about Bitcoin for this app.  The two trolls in the topic are just taking potshots because one is bitter about scaling, while the other is constantly trying (and failing) to convince people that Proof-of-Stake is better.  Pay them no mind.

You need a new catchphrase, this one is getting pretty old and predictable.  It's also a myth that has been thoroughly debunked:


Meaning, even if your prognostication of Lightning becoming centralised did come true (and there's no sign yet that it will become centralised), it would still offer you greater control over your wealth than a bank does.  If you can't grasp this incredibly simple concept, you are not qualified to comment further (but I suspect you'll keep babbling nonsense regardless).

So if you're quite finished attempting to derail the topic, let's get back to the part where the developers of Strike chose Bitcoin and Lightning for their app.  Notice how they didn't choose any of the crapcoins you repeatedly claim are "better".  That's because, here in the real world, people care about the strength and integrity of the network.  They don't want to place their wealth on weak and insecure chains.  They don't want to use coins that no merchants will accept as payment because they're nothing more than a novelty or gimmick.  They don't want to use networks where there's only one or two developers who might get bored and leave the project in limbo.  And these are only some of the reasons why Bitcoin and Lightning are the preferred platform for so many projects.  And when people develop utilities like this, it helps Bitcoin and Lightning grow larger still.  The momentum will continue to build and nothing (least of all a pathetic troll like you) can stop it.

Thanks for playing!

interesting question. at first glance, it seems more like a payment processor (like bitpay in reverse) than an exchange. but it's actually a lot more versatile, since invoices can be effectively used as buys and sells:


i really don't understand how it works under the hood. where is the BTC to fulfill invoices being sourced from? it seems like there must be a centralized market making mechanism to be able to instantly fulfill the requests.

And if LN had been designed without revocations in place, the detractors and trolls would have a really easy job, because then all you would need to do is always spend from an outdated commitment and easily defraud people.  The current implementation of Lightning would not be possible without revocations.  So it only makes the trolls look even more ridiculous and ill-informed when they claim that the very part that makes it secure is somehow a bad thing for users.

We'll also have to see what happens with Eltoo, since there may be an alternative way to handle maintaining channel states.  I look forward to the trolls' feeble attempts to undermine that one as well.  

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I can see how that would be a tricky one from a business perspective.  On the one hand, they want to assure people it's a legitimate business model, but on the other hand, they probably can't give away the finer details until they're a little more established, in order to avoid another company playing copycat and ripping off their business model.  They'll naturally want to make the most of first-mover advantage.

It depends how much incentive (i.e. discount) the merchant can give. In Jack Mallers' post, he gave the example of merchants in the cannabis industry:


That implies that merchants already have the margins to give customers 5%-15% discounts if their processing costs could be brought close to 0%. It's a big enough discount to get people to start using the app, since it leverages a payment rail they were planning on using anyway -- their debit card:


It's pretty cool, but the model probably won't work for lower margin businesses that don't have the same payment processing problems.

In Lightning, franky1.


It's Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's Layer 2, AKA the Lightning Network, has payment channels with real Bitcoins locked in them, that can be settled in the Bitcoin blockchain anytime.


Nit-picking are we?


It's about Lightning payments, franky1, not Bitcoin blockchain payments.

Lightening networks are really giving a boost to the bitcoin transactions. Even sending bitcoins is getting a few clicks away kind of thing which might surely make a lot of people start adopting bitcoins. This "strike" might even be more profitable for a lot of people who would like to spend their FIAT in buying bitcoins. They could actually buy bitcoins in just few seconds after their card performs the transaction.

This would also be a good start in order to start regulating bitcoins into centralized local jobs which are mostly related to fiat but now, bitcoins could be turned in into such kind of job roles. Payment via bitcoin can also be started to the employers which might even directly load their bank accounts for receiving bitcoins.