Quote from: Blacula X on May 16, 2016, 07:48:16 PM

Quote from: JayJuanGee on May 16, 2016, 07:31:19 PM

Quote from: adamstgBit on May 16, 2016, 07:09:47 PM

Quote from: Blacula X on May 16, 2016, 06:53:44 PM

Quote from: adamstgBit on May 16, 2016, 06:00:58 PM

thunder isn't useful for buying 1 cup of coffee
its useful for buying 100 speate cups of coffees instantly.

Open Channel for standard bitcoin fee
send 100 payments for each cup of coffee
Close Channel for standard bitcoin fee

cool huh?

I don't get why people are worked up about this, or why this Lightning is taking such a long time to develop.
Here's a way to solve the coffee problem that's both simpler, more secure, and more elegant than Thunder Cats:
1. Walk into Starbucks.
2. Buy a gift card for 100 cups of coffee, with BTC or USD.
3. Use gift card each time you need to buy stuff from Starbucks. Functionally identical to Lightning/thunder,
4. Profit!

i agree for coffee like TX, thats the way to go.

but for things like coinbase accounts sending 1000's of payments to bitpay... lighting and or thunder is a big deal.

I'm o.k. with sticking with starbucks as an example. We are not talking about 1 user buying several cups of coffee, but instead possibly 100 users or 1,000 users buying coffee through the day or the week or whatever period of time that the vender chooses before finally resolving with the blockchain .. and then at the end of the day, week or month, all of the transactions are resolved that are within that channel for $.10 or whatever is the applicable fee for the whole bundle of transactions.

Each one of the "1,000 users buying coffee through the day" will have to ~~buy a gift card~~ open a payment channel with Starbucks. The only difference is Starbucks would have access to all the "gift card" money if sold gift cards, while no one would have access to BTC with Lightning.
So not sure what you're trying to say.

Yep... so I will concede that maybe Starbucks is not the greatest in the world example for how this may be deployed and what kinds of advantages will come through it.

Many of us already realize that bitcoin provides a lot of utility in many different ways, so frequently it is not detrimental to bitcoin merely because at this time it does not provide all of the same benefits of some other technology, such as a gift card. As a user, we have a choice regarding which one to use for which purpose, and to decide the extent to which either or the possible avenues will benefit us, and to what extent.

Currently, none of us are going out and buying into Thunder because it remains somewhat theoretical, as compared to your example of a gift card that I can go out and buy right now, if I were to chose to do so.