Quote from: DannyHamilton on Today at 02:50:07 PM

Quote from: Pmalek on Today at 10:54:26 AM

I think what TangentC was trying to say is that it doesn't make sense opening a payment channel with someone just to send 1 or 2 transactions. You pay regular fees for opening and closing the channel, so if you send fees only once, you would actually pay more than for an on-chain transaction. There are custodial wallets though where you don't pay any opening/closing channel fees because you will be using their own payment channels.

My assumption is that there will eventually mostly be channels established with the main sources of acquiring bitcoin for the average person. Places such as exchanges, mining pools, or payroll companies. In that way, the fee will be paid once to set up the channel to get the bitcoins to you in the first place. You then, as you use your bitcoin with people that you don't have a direct channel with, they'll typically only require 1 or 2 intermediaries. Additionally, the competition will drive down the LN fees. If I don't like my exchange's (or payroll company's) LN fees, I'll switch to an exchange (or payroll company) that has lower fees. If thee fees are too high everywhere, then it creates an opportunity for someone else to start a service that with lower fees and still earn a living.

Pmalek is correct, my thoughts was exactly that.

IMO, you need 100s or more of transaction between you and whomever you are transacting with on LN, to make it worthwhile to use LN instead of just sending it normally.

You mentioned earlier, why does coinbase not use LN hubs,
Since they are an exchange, they can use their internal accounting system to perform offchain transactions without needing to bother with the complexity of run LN or Liquid 3rd party software.
https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/cryptocurrency-trading-pairs/how-to-send-and-receive-cryptocurrency

Quote

If you’re sending to a crypto address that belongs to another Coinbase user who has opted into Instant sends, you can use off-chain sends. Off-chain sends are instant and incur no transaction fees

So any coinbase user can send funds offchain instantly to another coinbase user and incur no transaction fees at all,
while LN or Liquid users, pay the initial onchain transaction fee, LN hubs fees, and final onchain withdrawal transaction fee.