Topic: Lightning Network effect on Bitcoin's price - page 3. (Read 14884 times)

it is not "locked up" in lightning network, LN is not a safe to lock anything
that is the capacity of it at the moment based on the money that people have put in their channels which is in 17 thousand range right now.

as for the effect on bitcoin price i think it won't have any significant effect for as long as it is not used by any major businesses. for example as long as exchanges have not yet set up their LN node. but as soon as that happens and we see some more real usages on a larger scale it can cause a big explosion in adoption and with it the price will rise fast and big.
there is also the problem that LN is not yet as safe as one might hope. it needs more work and it also needs more user friendly, easy to use applications so that regular people (like traders in case of exchanges) can easily and securely use it.

Many of us are familiar with this site, but if you aren't, you'd better make yourself now:



At the moment there are over 540 bitcoins locked up in Lightning Network payment channels. You may think it is not really a big deal, but it is the change that counts in this case. And if that number continues to expand like before and still more so if such growth will be explosive in the future, this metric will certainly start to be taken into account, if not already, and thus affect Bitcoin's market price. It is not some bullshit measure like the blocksize which gives us absolutely no clue about what's going on right here right now. In fact, I very soon expect the Bitcoin Cash proselytes (whatever flavor) to be eating their hearts out in envy for the lack of such a number

Indeed, you can claim that the number of payment channels and bitcoins doesn't reflect their actual use and you may be right to a degree. But for market it is irrelevant even if it is totally true. These coins are not traded anyway, so they do affect the balance of supply and demand, and as I said, when this number explodes along with the amount of bitcoins used in Lightning Network as a value transfer vehicle, the effect will be felt strongly. In this regard, Lightning Network stats are objective and should not be discarded. Beyond that, there's also psychology at work as people will see with their own eyes that Bitcoin does make a difference as a means of payment and builds real value through that

So don't forget to visit that number to see where the market is going