[Centmo]

These transactions are not occurring on the bitcoin network - they are occurring on the lightning network which is a second layer on top of the base bitcoin layer. Transactions here are virtually free and use virtually no energy. This is how bitcoin scales for many small transactions.

[kd913]

Transactions on the lightning network have difficulty scaling because each node needs to what compute the entire graph/nodes and setup channels?

A problem which scales even worse the more nodes in play.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoincash/comments/8n9xbp/why_the...

[panarky]

The lightning node running on my Raspberry Pi doesn't have any trouble finding routes so it can't be too compute-intensive.

Most transactions settle in two seconds or less for a fraction of a cent in fees.

[stimpson_j_cat]

The only knowledge you have of the lightning network is a YouTube video from 3 years ago posted on a subreddit with a financial interest in badmouthing BTC?

[NicoJuicy]

So, what is not correct in the video?

[0x000000001]

Pretty much all of it

[NicoJuicy]

Specify

[stimpson_j_cat]

LN has 75k channels right now and 3k BTC locked https://1ml.com/

Did the GP provide any specific reason why LN can't scale other than "here's a link to youtube from 2018?"

[duud]

If I want to remit US$100 from the US to someone in El Salvador and they want USD cash, how much is going to be left after all is said and done?

[anonomousename]

On the original network - about an hour and a half and ~$9. On the lightning network (layer 2) it would be about $0.09 and take less than a minute.

[nextaccountic]

An hour and a half? But there are new blocks every 10 minutes!

[jakopo87]

Transactions are confirmed when they are at least 6 blocks deep to avoid double spending.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Confirmation

[nextaccountic]

Confirmed by who? Coinbase currently requires only 3 confirmations[0]. Binance requires only 1 confirmation for deposits and 2 for withdraw[1].

Actually. Was there a successful double spend in Bitcoin ever?

I mean, this kind of attack can't be done in secret, right? Such attack wold immediately make the news, because the blockchain is public. And to pull it off you need a substantial % of the mining capacity, so only a handful entities in world can coordinate such high hashrate attack.

It just doesn't seem very likely, and specially not if you're just reversing a low value retail purchase. I'd wager the rate of counterfeit money you receive when dealing with cash is way higher.

[0] https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/getting-started/crypto... "Coinbase requires 3 confirmations to consider a bitcoin transaction final."

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/binance-cuts-time-needed-btc-...

[0x000000001]

It's not about double spend. It's entirely possible two miners successfully mine a block simultaneously but one of the miners didn't include your transaction in the block they mined. Now there's two competing blockchains and every miner chooses which one is the truth... longest blockchain wins, so whichever gets the most participants is likely to be the final blockchain

Now your transaction may not be included until a future block or be lost forever, though I'm not certain what it takes to be dropped from the mempool.

[jakopo87]

I quote from the link [1] you posted:

> To be clear, the respective blockchains will confirm blocks as normal and are not controlled by Binance. For the faster service, the exchange is accepting a reduced number of confirmations as sufficient to alter wallet balances within its own systems.

Binance and Coinbase on their own nodes can choose a lower number of blocks for confirmation but the network may reject it later, if that's the case they will have to put the transaction in another block to be mined.