Quote from: Carlton Banks on August 30, 2015, 08:32:42 AM

Quote from: iCEBREAKER on August 30, 2015, 07:26:14 AM

Quote from: knight22 on August 30, 2015, 05:24:30 AM

Quote from: iCEBREAKER on August 30, 2015, 05:19:48 AM

Again: The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".

Basically you can't reply to the simple question of "who is going to run a node for these financial institutions?". Gotcha.

And you keep talking about keeping the blockchain decentralized? What a joke you are.

Financial institutions may run their own nodes, hire a specialist, or use SPV. The point, for the sake of the network remaining diverse/diffuse/defensible/resilient, is to maintain the option of "really" (IE trustlessly) using Bitcoin for anyone with a $300 laptop and 1Mb upstream.

The broader point is that Bitcoin grants anyone with such a laptop and pipe the (revolutionary) option of being their own (disruptive) financial institution.

Absent a crackdown or other type of crisis, most people will simply "benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain."

But if there were a crackdown or other crisis, we must ensure that ~everyone is economically and technologically able to "write into the holy ledger."

A good example of where the anti-Blockstream people have a point IMO.

How will Lightning make money, and for who? How will that be structured? Will settling all Lightning channels on the blockchain provide enough revenue to keep miners incentivised?

The answers aren't complete because the system isn't finished. Where my agreement with people like knight22 ends is with their conclusion: because side chains framework and Lightning are currently incomplete, therefore the only other scaling "solution" is what everyone should choose, regardless of the flaws in that idea. Being the only game in town is frequently cited as a good reason to support 101 lol

Lightning will make money for anyone running a hub. Anyone can run a hub. In a certain way hub can tend toward centralization since they benefit from liquidity but there are technological solutions to this problem.

The second part of your comment starts with the premise that we are urgently in need of a scaling solution that should be implement RIGHT NOW so any solution is good enough and we can't possibly wait 3-4 more months to decide on more alternatives. I find myself disagreeing with this urgency.