That creates opprotunities for other Level 1 chains. Solana for example charges $0.00025 per transaction (however this is still denominated in the SOL currency so it will fluctuate). Hedera network is $0.0001 per transaction and is fixed in USD.
They have other problems. Solana's entire supply is said to be 5% of the current world population. I'll let you do the math on the rich/poor inequality this entails.
Each problem that's dismissed out of hand by crypto proponents is compounded by the endless streams of bigger and worse problems.
I'm very confused by both of your points. The supply of a cryptocurrency is equal to a person? A crypto token is not a person so I'm guessing you missed a few words there?
How is building a competing chain to more efficiently solve a problem (high transaction fees) in a competitive market in any way "dismissing" that problem? That seems the exact opposite of dismissing a problem.
Do those new solutions come with new problems? Sure, that's true of any technology. Dynamo-based databases solved high availability and network partitionability of data but come with several trade-offs. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use Cassandra for anything.
That said, Solana is not the hill I'm willing to die on and it's hot garbage. Hedera seems good though.
Same. Lightning gets around them by bunching a bunch of transactions into one bitcoin transaction. Which is exactly what people have been doing with card processing for ages now.
And of course there other payment systems around the world that don't rely on card transactions.
And don't forget that the entire lightning thing is dependent on banks aka nodes with large sums of money to provide liquidity in the system.
Visa and MC could be L5 networks for Bitcoin, why not? Lightning is lower level and more decentralized, but it doesn't solve issues like dispute arbitration which credit cards do.
Settlement is among the least interesting problems that Visa and Mastercard solve for merchants and customers.
Yes, being able to settle across currencies pretty efficiently is nice, but the real value is just what you mention: Dispute arbitration and managing liability in case of fraud.
The incentive structure of Lightning to me seems to heavily incentivize the formation of a few centralized nodes affiliated with wallet providers – a structure which would forfeit many, if not all, of these properties.
Imagine a world where the web is controlled by a single entity, say Facebook. They get to decide who is allowed to create a website. They get to decide how much it cost. If they're not happy with the site's content, they can take it offline. Do you believe that would be a better world to live in?
- trustless: I trust the companies I use, it works
That's because there's usually no alternative. But when there's a trustless alternative, you may find that it is less risky or costly. Many people chose e2e encrypted messengers because they don't trust a third party with their private messages.
- censure resistance: OK, fringe case for most
"[...] Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
It may be fringe but it's a massive issue for those who are censored. It's also not that uncommon. It is estimated that there are over 1 billion unbanked people worldwide. Also, try "PayPal horror stories" on Google.
- pseudonymous: why do I want anyone to be able to see my transaction history?
What parent meant is you can transact with people without knowing their real identity. I could send you a BTC tip on HN without knowing your name or address. Regarding your concern about privacy, no one can really determine your transaction history by looking at the blockchain. It's possible to do some guessing but all you really see are transactions going from opaque addresses to other opaque addresses with no attached identity information. Also, this can be further solved with CoinJoin[0].
> you may find that it is less risky or costly. Many people chose e2e encrypted messengers because they don't trust a third party with their private messages
Private messages are not money. Example: you ordered some goods and those arrived in bad shape. What's your recourse in the trustless world?
> The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.
> Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.
Right, which is why we have regulations on reserve requirements for banks, as well as things like FDIC insurance that guarantees your money in a bank account.
>The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that's required to make it work.
Surely this is a joke? Most currencies enjoy a high degree of trust until they collapse due to structural reasons that have nothing to do with trust whatsoever.
The euro zone and the dollar show that there is practically no shortage of trust whatsoever.
Seriously, this dude is supposed to liberate us from the evils of money?
How did it come to this? The root problem with currency is the zero lower bound of interest and liquidity preference which both combined result in permanently positive interest rates. When you refuse to pay interest, the economy stagnates and it can result in mass unemployment. This has nothing to do with trust. The Bitcoin economy is plagued with mass unemployment. The insanity of unemployment is a consequence of the insanity of non neutral money.
Alternatively, you can pay interest, however this means you must perpetually borrow more money, e.g. Keynesian fiscal stimulus, notice that the insanity originates in money itself, not in the political response, the political response must be at least as insane as the money system, no less and it collapses. Now, there is a third way, QE aka not bothering to ask people whether they want to lend their money out, however, due to liquidity preference, the additionally created money will stagnate somewhere, meaning you can't ever stop QE. Again, in this case the insanity is a structural property of the currency, the monetary intervention has to be as insane as the money system and no less.
The apparent untrustworthiness of politicians is the result of the insanity of money, not the other way around. If money worked properly, you wouldn't need politicians to mess with it, you wouldn't even consider trust to be the problem because the amount needed would be so miniscule as to never matter in the grand scheme of things.
It is really strange to me, that people notice a constant problem with money and yet they still come up with the same conclusion "you're holding it wrong", what if it is impossible to hold it properly? What if permanent money is irreparably broken and forces its own debasement and all the other problems?
What's your definition of L2 that include centralised entities?
There is no central authority in LN. There may be "hubs" which are more or less important, but that's not centralisation because there are several of them, it can also work without them, and also they can't steal your money.
Would you say that email is centralised because there area few big server (Gmail, Microsoft)? But even if it may more convenient to use one of the big server, you still have the choice not to use them.
With LN you can have a private channel with your friend and do unlimited number of transactions with (literally!) 0 fees. Thanks to recent developments it's also much easier (and cheaper) to then swap those BTC to onchain - sometimes even cheaper than a comparable single onchain BTC transactions.