Quote from: smooth on August 11, 2015, 11:37:33 PM

Quote from: thezerg on August 11, 2015, 10:13:03 PM

Quote from: cypherdoc on August 11, 2015, 08:13:33 PM

this sounds exactly like something i'd say:
The Blockstream Business Plan (self.Bitcoin)
submitted an hour ago * by Celean

And if this is true Blockstream is making a HUGE mistake. I don't think many people are doing multiple txns per day, every day right now. I don't even think many people do 1 txn per week. I doubt that people will be willing to sequester coins into the LN for significant periods (no I have no facts to back up this intuition).

So I don't think that the lightning network solves the problem we have today which is getting people to do their FIRST txn (expand the network) and then getting them to use it periodically (use encourages merchants to accept it).

Once people are using BTC a couple times per day, LN is becomes very valuable. Its actually WORSE if you do just one txn in a payment channel (it takes 2 blockchain txns instead of 1).

So LN won't actually solve the typical use pattern today. And if that pattern is forced to pay high fees people will choose other payment options stagnating Bitcoin growth (or best case transforms into low velocity digital gold) to the point where we'll never need the volumes LN can offer.

Bad argument.

The current network @ 5 tps can handle 432k transactions per day. If all the high volume stuff (most of which is tied to speculation in one form or another) were moved off that would be maybe 431k people on-ramping per day which is vastly more than is needed.

I'm not sure that you have any basis to your claim that the high volume stuff is tied to speculation. Regardless, the purpose of the use does not matter. What matters is the structure of their transactions. I can invent lots of network structure and use patterns which LN does not work for but is speculative. For example, lots of people doing weekly dollar cost averaging purchases could take a large bite out of that 400k daily txn rate.

Also presupposing the high volume stuff is moved offchain means txn fees are likely high and blocks filled which will negatively affect new users making their one time purchases. People tend not to do stuff proactively, especially when it entails adopting a new technology operating within a questionable legal framework (are LN nodes money transmitters?)

Also, I think we've onboarded most of the speculative investors we are going to get in this phase -- we need a wave of utility next. I have a hard time believing this utility use moves from once per month to multiple daily txns. Rather it will be monthly txns becoming weekly txns driven by B2B, remittance, and intermittent online purchases by bitcoin users. And it will be colored coin and ledger use (which LN cannot optimize).