[Operyl]

I keep seeing this brought up over months and months, but how close are we even to using it? Is the technology a thing yet? Or is it all white papers.

[grubles]

I demoed [0] receiving one tenths of a cent's worth of bitcoin (0.00000010 BTC) instantly, and on Bitcoin's mainnet (not a test network).

I also demoed [1] purchasing swag from Blockstream's store [2] which is powered by their newly released Wordpress e-commerce plugin [3] that enables Lightning payments.

I did not screencapture the videos because Qubes dom0 does not come OOTB with screenrecording software, and I don't want to enable networking in dom0 to install software that does.

[0]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/955611467889422337

[1]https://twitter.com/notgrubles/status/954933507863863296

[2]https://store.blockstream.com/

[3]https://blockstream.com/2018/01/16/lightning-charge.html

[Mahn]

It exists in its early stages, but it's terribly impractical, hence no exchange or end user is in a rush to adopt it. Its design is almost like someone took a hard look at Bitcoin and concluded "Gee, this is not cumbersome enough for people, we need to make transacting a worse and more confusing experience".

[VarFarYonder]

Here is a graph showing the number of lightning network payment channels on the bitcoin mainnet: https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1

[wyager]

Working implementations exist and are usable, but they are being very cautious before releasing to the general public.

[brokensegue]

it's not useful for speculating on the price of bitcoin so few people will use it

[josu]

You can buy coffee https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/955870434230132736