There seems to be a chicken and egg problem with lightning. When I make a new channel it says I can only receive the amount on a channel that I have spent down. So how did the first address get spent down enough to receive the first lightning tokens?
Also writing that previous sentence made me wonder, for that matter, what is the correct terminology for these things? If we are just going to call them bitcoins like there is no distinction between the bitcoins on the main net and these frequently renegotiated contractual obligations on the lightning network? Is that reasonable? When I make a new channel it says I can only receive the amount on a channel that I have spent down. So how did the first address get spent down enough to receive the first lightning tokens?
Everything is settled down once someone decides to close the channel. The biggest issue right now is that channel limits how much you can spend. Split payments are a planned feature.