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?
When you open a channel you are essentially giving your money to someone else while making certain arrangements that ensure that they can't spend it themselves without your permission (think of it like a wad of cash that you hand to someone else with a string attached that you can yank if you see them doing anything fishy
).No, not it is not "giving away your money" to someone else. It is more like sending your money for safe keeping in a multisig address that you can get anytime you want. "Giving away" implies you already "lost" control over your money, but what stops it is the "rules".
I was trying to make a relatable analogy. He can go read the white paper if he wants to understand technical specifics. I was giving an explanation that didn't require him to understand multisig addresses. I was explaining it like I would explain it to my mother and your "corrections" would confuse my mother.