Politicians’ newfound love of crypto probably has more to do with a cynical bid for young voter support and Silicon Valley cash than a maturing of a financially perilous set of assets.
Yes lightning, the network of centralized trusted third party banks that are needed to make bitcoin useable so long as you deposit all the bitcoin you want to use into one of these centralized banks first, at which point they can make bank to bank transfers without having any involvement with the actual bitcoin network at all.
Or you could do basically the same process with an actual Debit card, which does the same thing but can be used in actual stores.
You also need to note that for something posturing itself as a currency, the fact that you either have to wait hours or days for the price per transaction to come down or spend an even more absurd transaction fee on you’re cup of coffee before you can check out is actually a rather fundamental problem.
Lightning Network is not centralized, anyone can run a node with their own wallet. Not everyone will want to, since there are management and safety tasks involved, but that’s up to each one.
Funds are stored in your own wallet… but again, you can use some bank’s wallet if you want to, up to each one.
Transactions are almost instantaneous, no need to wait for the channels to settle. You only need to wait when moving Bitcoin between non-LN and LN wallets or, if running your own node, when a channel closes.
You can find a list of physical stores accepting LN… mostly in El Salvador, but still.
What is the inherent value of 50 USD?
Transactions on Bitcoin’s lightning network are still worth pennies, who cares about what some millionaires pay to settle them quickly.
Yes lightning, the network of centralized trusted third party banks that are needed to make bitcoin useable so long as you deposit all the bitcoin you want to use into one of these centralized banks first, at which point they can make bank to bank transfers without having any involvement with the actual bitcoin network at all.
Or you could do basically the same process with an actual Debit card, which does the same thing but can be used in actual stores.
You also need to note that for something posturing itself as a currency, the fact that you either have to wait hours or days for the price per transaction to come down or spend an even more absurd transaction fee on you’re cup of coffee before you can check out is actually a rather fundamental problem.
Lightning Network is not centralized, anyone can run a node with their own wallet. Not everyone will want to, since there are management and safety tasks involved, but that’s up to each one.
Funds are stored in your own wallet… but again, you can use some bank’s wallet if you want to, up to each one.
Transactions are almost instantaneous, no need to wait for the channels to settle. You only need to wait when moving Bitcoin between non-LN and LN wallets or, if running your own node, when a channel closes.
You can find a list of physical stores accepting LN… mostly in El Salvador, but still.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network