Topic: Lightning Network is a banker scam part one (Read 455 times)

Shouldnt the moderators start deleting his posts? He is trying to make an argument that doesnt have the research and the data to back them up. That only gives the newbs the wrong information and it also makes the forum more toxic. There must be some strict moderation done in here.

Check the users post history, he or she is probably a paid shill or someone trying to push their own future coin. {based on

posts that were done} This user is quite desperate to discredit Bitcoin, so the Lightning Network must be a huge threat to

him/her or even them. {depending on who is paying } The funny part was when he/she shifted his/her attention towards

discrediting a ICO that I also represent.    { I did some research on these guys and they look pretty legit, so it is

just natural to invest and also promote the product you believe in. }

No matter what you say, this user will know better.... {you know the kind} 

The biggest issue I see with the lightning network is that it will have the opposite effect that the devs are thinking it will have.

If the LN network is successful, the number of transactions will go up, not down.  Its designed to do micro transactions etc at a lower fee.  This will bring in more users which will need to buy coins on LN/open channels.  Both of these result in more transactions hitting the btc blockchain.  Doing the math, even with bigger blocks, (guessing 24 tx/s) this allows 64 million channels to be open or closed a month.  Now 25% of that space is already full, so its really only 48 million, or 24 million open and close actions.

So the LN networks own success will be its downfall.  If it gets popular and poeple switch to it, it will quickly fill up the btc blockchain with people depositing/withdrawing coins from it.  The average person gets paid twice a month, so they will likely be depositing twice a month.  Thats only room for 12 million people to open and close channels.  This isn't even accounting for merchants wanting to cash out daily/weekly at most. 

The problem is that the LN network was designed for three things and the developers forgot to account for what happens if its successful.  It was designed to improve transaction speed and lower fees, while removing transactions from the blockchain.  The issue is if its successful more users then ever will be using the blockchain.

Just my two cents.

Well? Were waiting. Why and how is Lightning a bankers scam? Thats the problem with this forum sometimes. There are lots of multiple alt accounts trying to spread the wrong information and FUD.

Having that said. The other side of the problem are the moderators. They are not doing anything to moderate these people or to correct the information.

How is Lightning a banker's scam? There was nothing in Anti-Cen's long post that explains why its a scam. Its another network that sits on top of BTC that offers cheaper fees and faster transactions.

Please explain it briefly, without the bullshit Alice and Bob story, why its a bankers scam.

Not interested in your desperate attempts to bump this thread anymore. Please continue your crusade for all I care.  Maybe you will save the world. On my part, I'll continue to call your bullshit. And dude, please stop whining about "being rude" and all.

I don't understand why this attack is coming against lightning network at this time even when the tech has not fully rolled out. I have seen links that was even claiming that the fault has been discovered but what is still surprising was why all of this attacks were not coming out when the project was on testnet neither when it was being developed just now when its trying to breathe some fresh air into the bitcoin space, attacks comes from everywhere yet a lot of proponent to this are not even suggesting or making a better way to improving bitcoin.

I am not saying its all perfect for lightning network but this is a big development that is happening after a long deadlock of events. Let's see how it works then we can then examine our outputs to know areas of improvements rather than an outright FUD as I would call all this.

seems sounds interesting but i think in the situation like this,like bitcoin is having high fees and slow transaction we need to support such good idea to improve bitcoin network.Lightning network i think is a good idea.

Well I welcome debate when its based on facts but you have been debunked and now want to be rude so lets
deal with some FUD like MoonLite which is yet another ICO that we are getting sick off that runs on the
ETH network and in eight days time goes live using the MNL tokens.

Lovely marketing with the usual signature campaign that pays in ETH to anyone that spams for them
and they are so desperate for money that they will even take payments using Ripple which amishmanish
hates along with about anything else that's not Bitcoin.

Now is this new ICO selling bullshit, lets see

 

it's cold in Iceland so that saves on air-conditioning costs but I seem to remember that high voltage power lines
can be used to transmit cheap energy across the sea but it's better just to waste it anyway by running servers
in Iceland so that everyone else can play CPU-Wars with them to mine coins

I know I will start with 1000Th and see if the other side can get a machine that is so hot it glows
in the dark to match the performance because we are green, we are saving the earth

My dear up for sale green friend it seems like the contents of my footer has upset you
so you like to keep being rude and attacking me since I debunked you because your facts were incorrect so
please have a second go and debunk any of the facts mentioned above  


  

You are free to read the white paper yourself


The tone of your voice needs to also be called into question too before you lecture me about how to
act in a forum so lets try sticking with facts and deal with the source please

Its not just their envy. Some of them even have an agenda to fulfill by creating FUD about bitcoin's innovations. These same people were spreading lies about SegWit and now they have a new drum to beat.

I just replied to this thread so that the FUD doesn't go unchallenged. It is a fact that understanding SegWit, LN, heck even Bitcoin is not easy for newcomers. We are all learning on the go. It takes a bit of effort and encouragement.This forum is supposed to provide that encouragement to explore how bitcoin gives you control of your money and has helped me a lot. Lot of good work is being done for Bitcoin scaling and its an ongoing community project. Good info on the roadmap can be seen here.

Quite simply your arrogance is off-putting and even if you did have valid arguments, your “superior intellect” failed to understand that this is, after all, a forum dedicated to bitcoin occupied by lots of people who are invested in it, so doomsayers like yourself will naturally be treated with scepticism, since most of their “arguments” are rooted in the fact that they themselves have failed to ride the wave (and for some reason, still refuse to grab opportunies) and so (fueled by envy?) don’t want to see bitcoin do well.

I appreciate your input but like I said above, will treat it with scepticism.

Yes and now we are back to Bob buying coffee for the month each morning from the same shop and
you can stop speculating with what the transactions fees might be in a years time because you don't
know and you don't know what the banking hub fees will be or the interest payments on money on
loan because again you don't know

Quite simply you don't get it because you don't want to get it and my intellect has better things to do than
trade insults with you so drink your coffee Bob and get on with them "Signature Campaigns"   

Thanks for the better constructed sentences and thought out replies this time. I won't have to strain to understand you. This makes the discussion worth our while. The scenario of Bob buying his coffee is pretty simple. Its just a pessimistic, worst-possible imaginary situation because you have assumed that:
1. Bob needs to open a channel with everyone he deals with. Not necessary. He doesn't have to do that. The network does that for him.He just needs one payment channel with another node.
2. Bitcoin price decreases and he doesn't have enough finances. How is that not a negative scenario? Further, you are assuming that if fiat varies the merchant changes the amount in BTC. (which does happen, but then you miss the point that widespread adoption means BTC has its own value. As people keep repeating at the forum and elsewhere. 1 BTC is always 1 BTC.)
3. You assume that On-chain fees remain 30$. You again assume this ignoring the fact that the  avg. fees have already come down to ~20$ https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m and that with LN, a lot of transactions clogging the network will be gone.

Quite simply, you are imagining the worst cases because you are on the other side of the debate. Anyways, Moving on.


Multiple transactions for the cost of one transaction. This is a big positive for individual users. Or do you imagine a utopian situation where we will have visa-level transactions on a decentralized, secure, trustless network and there won't be any fees?


Major hubs are not the same as today's banks, no matter how much you want to continue beating that drum. You are not trusting them with your money. It stays in a multi-sig wallet and only the latest updated state of payments can be broadcast to the main chain.


You only need to use the Segwit address as a user. Use an Electrum wallet and there are enough instructions available to make a Segwit enabled wallet. Here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Electrum/comments/7llnll/here_is_how_to_create_segwit_bip49_wallets_and/
I do agree that bitcoin hasn't yet evolved to suit the most basic user who just want to install an app and start payments. To be honest, bitcoin's awareness has gone from the slightly tech oriented to everyone's grandma now. There is a lot of catching up to do in terms of user experience. How LN will incorporate all the underlying details is yet to be seen.

Once again, my being rude to you has only to do with your constant harking on "its a bank". And maybe also because you seem to have an agenda to fill the forum with such posts. "others have managed without having to burn CPU/GPU/ASICS?". Are you talking about IOTA etc. I have no intention of being an apologist for LN. I truly believe that such innovative methods are a better answer than relying on unlimited block sizes.


C'mon. You said "Pointers to blocks of data" and now you come up with this argument of capping maximum fees. You just changed the goalpost. All nodes should be able to verify the chain for themselves and take part in accepting or rejecting a new block. Your idea to only have a few super-nodes that carry the burden of verifying the blockchain is nowhere near what bitcoin is supposed to be.


This was in response to your statement:

Its easy to say things like that when YOU are not the one coming up with the solutions. I called you out only for showing such disregard to someone else's hard work.After doing that, you don't get to be the victim by saying things like "people are being rude" or that "they need to use insults" .
About the "green crypto mining ICO", You are welcome to check it out. Its a signature campaign. PoW isn't going anywhere for a long time. What you can try is to make it green by efficiency and using Renewable energy sources. I think its a good idea.

I like to deal in facts friend and will often backup what I say with links to articles or youtube and if you watched the video about Bob buying a coffee a
day for a month from the same shop then I say that someone is presenting the "best-possible imaginary situations" so lets have some balance
here.


That is an assumption you are making and does not take into account inter banking settlement between the large banking hubs that will be added
to the BC and what do you make of this from the white-paper


My understanding is that I am using my own money in the ledger held by me and the first hub/bank in the route
but then the bank is forced to use it's own money for the next stage of the hop and will want interest payments
from me for the service. In other words a credit in the left hand ledger does not become a credit in the right hand
ledger


Yes I sign up with a large banks who charges fees and interest but I am free to leave and pay $30 BC Tx fee and join another bank
so why the Bob and the Coffee shop story is just fantasies just like I said


Elegant when changing a back end database does not include telling everyone that they not only need a new telephone number but they need
a new telephone (Wallet in this case) too. Lets not start blaming others for the mistakes of the past I say.


I have already addressed the question of Bob being a bank/hub for Alice so please go back and read it because the argument falls flat on it's face
and poor old Bob ends up going without his morning coffee at the end of the week.

Seems to me that you have no technical argument to present here and just want to be rude in case people cotton on to the facts that
Lightning attempt to solve the scaling issue is by introducing banks to Bitcoin which is not quite as bad as starting CPU-Wars all over
the internet between miners to solve the problem of generating new coins which others have managed without having to burn out CPU's


Yes developer, no not Linux based but I will offer up this one line of code

public static money MaxFees =1.50 // 20,000 miners not need to process 7 TPS, too little work to pass around to feed all of Africa

Nodes doing distributed processing can all be the same, part of smaller group processing 1/50th of the BC so not sure what your going on about
"All nodes are supposed to be equal" because some are running $300 hardware and others are running $50,000 hardware anyway


I know when I have won a debate when the other side feels the need to use insults but what about the "green crypto mining ICO" " under your
name because 20,000 miners on Bitcoin doing CPU-Wars is not green so forgive me when I say it looks like you will say anything that you are being paid to say

Your posts are pretty much incoherent to analyse the argument except that it sounds like you are hell bent on kicking dust. I am sure most of the notable members on BCT don't want to indulge people like you who just want to come up with the worst-possible imaginary situations. So I'll try in whatever humble manner I can.

you make this argument about the settlement transaction. LN aims to enable micropayments and it does that quite well. The settlement transaction when closing the channel is a one-time cost which will not be the 30$ owing to de-congestion as smaller payments move to LN. That will become clearer from the state of mempool once LN starts to be used by exchanges/ merchants.

You won't need to open channels with every individual/ store you want to transact with. It'll be a multi-hop transaction as explained in the videos quite well. You will anyways have a channel with some major hub whenever you make your first purchase. Depending on how that services you, you can always change it to someone else when you settle your transaction and open a new channel.

Segwith adoption is still low due to which its positive effects are not being felt. This is a community project and of course the "üser" community needs to do its part. Bitcoin developers don't owe anything to anybody. They give you an elegant solution and you don't use it. Its not on them to market it like Mr. Ver and form a circlejerk of Bcash tipping idiots.


Same repeated argument. You want to use keep using the fear psychosis of "Banks". With funds committed to an LN channel, EVERYONE is a BANK. Everyone is in it together. Of course some will be bigger, some medium and some smaller.


Are you a developer? Do you have a working code for this "Idea" you are proposing? If yes, you are welcome to go join the github and propose it there. If you can't do this and have only thought of this in some algorithmic way then how are you talking about Pointers to collection of nodes??!! All nodes are supposed to be equal. What are you even doing here if you think that its okay for only a few masternodes to process the block data. There's SPV wallets for that.


Yeah, sure. Coming from someone who cannot form more than a couple of coherent sentences, this is good advice /s

The trouble comes at the end of the month when you settle the account and get hit with a $30 as you coffee bill
gets added to the block-chain so this is P2P and without banking hubs you would need to also open and then pay to close
channels with your food store and the burger stand each month.

I spent an hour reading the lightning white-paper today for a second time and regular wallets that you or I use
won't implement everything in the protocol because it becomes complicated but you can guarantee that the banker
hubs will take an advantage of this to their advantage and understand all the tricks in the book.


and also


What button will I press in my wallet to create "highly complex transaction contract" and
where is the button I press to bribe the miners to do XYZ


if things are getting this complicated just to record balances in a public BC then
something is looking very wrong to me

Fees of $30 is not far of the current price and no one with a brain cell is doing micro-transactions using Bitcoin just now
unless you consider $100 as being micro payments instead of a few cents so I cannot agree with you here.


Playing with block size and timings like ETH has done can improve the network and in theory Segwit should had
helped but in practice fees continued to increase since its introduction so we must all be using the currency wrong.

What the developers are doing here is saying the car engine is broken, you need a new one that runs on "Banks"
instead of "gas" but really the old engine just needs fixing and they need to apply distributed processing to the
block-chain itself and brake it down into manageable sized chunks.

Block headers are quite small and are connect like a linked list to each other but instead of containing the block
itself it could just become a pointer to a collection of nodes that process the block data or we could have block ranges
in the header like is used in Whois

This approach for sure would turbo boost the network way above IOTA speeds but would still be kicking the can down the road
because the headers would become too big in time if we all start sending $0.01 to view VIP web-pages but all
spending over say $0.99 should be on the public BC or we may as well not have one in the first place and if other
networks can present a public view of a large block-chain then so can we without using banks

Here is the white-paper https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf
needs chucking in the bin if you ask me and I am far from being alone in saying this






 

What you are not adding in your "story" is the following. When the Lightning Network is implemented, most of the micro transactions clogging the network at the moment, goes off-chain and this leads to a reduction in the miners fees.

Even with the LN the Mempool will become congested again in the future. and then the Block sizes can be increased to manage that.

Everyone seem to think, the Block size with the LN, should be fixed, but it is not the case.  

When I realized how Lightning Hubs works, I thought of the same thing too.

If they all want Bitcoin to be used in purchasing coffees, use/integrate/partner with a 3rd-party wallet that was designed for micro transactions.
Designed to send and receive (without using the blockchain) funds within their system.
It is meant for small payments so, you only need to send some funds to that wallet to be used for buying coffee or something else.
Find a coffee shot that accepts "that" payment method and Voala! no transaction fee micro-transaction.

Bitcoin needs improvements in the system not in this type of usability options.
To minimize conflicts, keep Bitcoin as it is while improving the transactions and let the world develop services above it.

Like today's web programming, binaries are in the bottom and CSS/HTML as the front-end.
Let bitcoin become the foundation (the binaries) of future services.

Interesting viewpoint...

I'm confused, who pays the miner fee for opening/closing the channel? Isn't this split according to the funding ratio?

Regardless, even if they'd split the fees, it's quite expensive.

Was i to be you and looking for an adventure and wanting an education at the same time then I would
watch trades on Binance until you think you know the ropes of when to buy and sell and then have a
flutter and see if you can edge your way up a well oiled pole

it could provide fun for hours but if over a week you can turn $10 into $100 doing say 50 trades
buying and then selling then you know you have what it takes otherwise you know that it was not for you.

please come back and let me know if you get the $100 because I am looking for a trader like that
myself that i can team up with and then I won't call you a slot-machine player anymore 

Transaction fee is one major thing which is preventing bit coin to be used more commonly and widely. The current transaction fees are very high (For eg: For doing a transaction of 0.002000 BTC, the transaction fee is 0.000500 (1/4th of the amount being sent). I wanted to learn the ropes of cryptotrading and started with a small amount of ~40 USD. But due to the high transaction fee, it is just laying idle without being transferred to a cryptocurrency exchange like Binance!

Well i am hearing that Segwit wallets are only saving people 20% and not 50% and we should demand a reduction
in running cost since it's a second class service being "Off-Block" so they are back peddling really and other systems
that do scale can keep all transactions on-block.

Fees should be below $1.00 per transaction and that's high, never mind signing up with a bank who will themselves
be charged the BTC $30 mining fees if you close the channel and they have a credit on the balance sheet for your
account. No way on this earth will this work like they are making out unless you think some unknown middleman
is happy to incur a $30 cost just to ensure that you get your money. 

Interesting take on the Lightning Network. Based on what I have read, there seems to be a decrease in fee, but not in a big magnitude (it seems the fee reduction to be in the range of 10% to 50%).

Waiting for the 2nd part

The Alice and Bob story with the Coffee shop is the fob off story the lightning team are using here and clearly
it won't work in reality for the reasons that I have listed and documented but in part two I will
cover the real deal of how it will work once people see the hubs for what they are, Banks and then
yes it could save you money but only if you open a bank account.............. err...... sorry........channel
and deposit you own coins by having locks placed on you BTC coins at the central banks .... err...... I mean
Bitcoin block-chain

Forget any talk about Bitcoin then being able to process 596 or a billion transactions per second even if we
ignore the hubs being banks and fees grandly increasing (Miner will run the banks) because the best this
"Lightning Network" will achieve in terms of performance increase is something like a factor of ten unless we
all significantly change our behavior and start acting like Bob the Builder because inter bank, sorry Hub settlement
will also add extra transactions to the Bitcoin main block-chain that can only process seven transactions per second.

oh yes anyone can close a channel (well for now anyway  ) so if your in credit with a banking hub and you force the bank to send you $1 that
is owed back to you so they get hit with the main block-chain $30 transaction fee then they are not going to be very happy so do read
the terms and conditions before signing any contract with bankers and watch out for credit agency checks.

So far I have assumed that locking coins on the main block-chain is free but the poor old miners not
getting $30 per transaction might well have other plans about that little free service

I am not sure this is how it works 100%, but I think you have some of it right.  I felt the same way you did so I came up with http://cpay.today screenshots on facebook -> https://www.facebook.com/cpaytoday/   All support is appreciated.

My main goal is for instant free sending of crypto currencies.

In the promotional video shown below Bob wants to buy Coffee from a Coffee shop at $1.50 a day for the next month
(As if that's going to happen very often) so a channel is created between Bob and the Coffee shop and Bob
deposits (Locks coins in BTC Block chain) $40 in BTC into a multi signature account (Private off block ledger) that they both now share.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrr_zPmEiME

Bob buys twenty cups of Coffee during the month and they both agree that Bob now owes the shop $30 so at the end
of the month the channel get closed and $30 is sent from Bob's BTC account to the Coffee shop but then Bob gets hit
with the miners transaction fee of $30 so each cup of Coffee has now cost Bob $3.00 a cup instead of $1.50



Being a modern day Bitcoin Lover Bob would also need to open Channels with his local grocery shop, food bar, Newspaper store
and at today's costs of $30 in transaction fees his expenses has gone up by $120.00 for the month.

if the bitcoin prices goes down during the month then all over sudden Bob the builder does not have enough finances in the
off block private ledger to cover the bills so by the end of the month he is having to go without his morning Coffee.

Now the propaganda really starts to pile on in the video because Bob has a friend called Alice who lives in the same street
and she also like to drink Coffee from the same Coffee shop as Bob and as miraculous as it sounds she purchased Bob's old TV
for $70 but because both Bob and Alice know each other she over pays Bob $30 for the TV so the channel between the two was kept open
for the whole month.

Alice ---------------------------- > Bob -------------------------> Coffee shop
Deposit              $100                                    $50



This will now allow Alice to purchase Coffee from the shop but she likes breakfast at the same time so once again Bob
is out of luck long before the end of the month and now the BTC miners have managed to earn themselves $60 in fees
instead of the two just using regular cash and was Alice not to over deposit money in the Bob channel then this arrangement
becomes null and void.

Clearly the "Lightning Network" (LN) designers want this to look like a peoples bank (Bank of China is more like it) but for
obvious reasons it is not practical to use LN in the way they are suggesting it and they must think that the world of full of Bob the builders and Wendy's
so in the next part of the article we will cover Hubs and how they are really banks that will be charging fees on top of the crazy BTC miner transaction fees

Also read the link below from Coindesk if not totally convinced by now.
https://www.coindesk.com/lightning-network-may-not-solve-bitcoins-scaling-trilemma/