[sadness3]

It's also about the systems it's replacing, which all the careful studies I've seen have rated as even less efficient. It also doesn't take into account future improvements in energy efficiency, which in the case of Ethereum are near and profound.

[tsimionescu]

Bitcoin and all proof of work systems can barely replace the transaction processing of a small bank, nevermind all of the other operations, while consuming more energy than many entire countries.

[lowkey]

El Salvador is the example that proves you wrong. They are using Lightning Network on top of Bitcoin to scale to enormous transaction volume - enough to run an entire country with plenty of room to spare.

Proof of work pays for network security, not Tx volume - the most secure super-computer ever invented.

Transaction processing is a free side-benefit.

With Lightning, TX Processing scales to meet any arbitrary needs.

[tsimionescu]

How many people are actually using Lightning network in El Salvador at the moment? Also, isn't using Lightning Network over Bitcoin essentially equivalent to using Visa's payment network over the traditional banking system - i.e. a completely separate system, with entriely different trust characteristics and entriely different trusted entities?

People using LN are not transacting using Bitcoin. They are denominating their transactions in Bitcoin, and trusting LN to eventually convert to Bitcoin (at the huge bitcoin transaction cost) if/when they eventually need it. Even worse, most people will not use LN directly, they will use yet another third party, one that will operate a bitcoin wallet and LN channel for them (likely the same wallet and channel for many, many different people).

[lowkey]

> How many people are actually using Lightning network in El Salvador at the moment?

My understanding is that they are onboarding something like 20,000 new users per day through community trainings and bootcamps.

[tsimionescu]

That's through Strike's app, right? I don't think that creates LN channels for everyone, LN is just an internal implementation detail for this centralized payment app.

[lowkey]

Strike is one option but certainly not the only one. With Bitcoin as Legal tender in El Salvador and Lightning fully supported as a payment network, users are not locked in to a single approved app.

Users can participate with any Lightning wallet such as the free and open BlueWallet.io app or any other Lightning app. No one is obligated to use Strike.

That is the beauty of free, own and interoperable standards such as Bitcoin or Lightning.

[acdha]

El Salvador could be the example but it’s far from proven. It definitely shows that Bitcoin really doesn’t scale: getting remotely competitive speed and cost requires giving up the decentralization vision and using Lightning network companies which are banks in all but name.