The lightning network described in this post explicitly solves both the speed and cost problems with Bitcoin transactions. This still leaves the scam/grifter problem in the ecosystem, but your dismissal is ignorant of the major content of the article. I encourage you to read it and then update your comment. I’m not a crypto enthusiast, just someone who prefers higher quality discussion on HN.
I have been hearing about Lightning as a solution for Bitcoin's scaling issues for _years_. Far from being "ignorant of the major content of the article", I think my comment in fact echoes the article's admission of exactly the same problems I described. Reproduced here:
> Developer tooling still needs to be built out to enable more user friendly applications. With most still treating BTC as an investment, we’re yet to see broad demand to use it for payments (use of Lightning rails for fiat payments remains a compelling opportunity). Despite progress from infrastructure companies, Lightning is still cumbersome for new users and merchants. Additionally, onboarding low income users in developing countries remains a major challenge to fulfilling the promise of Lightning remittances.
And, somewhat humorously and very tellingly, Coinbase itself calls out its own lack of support for Lightning:
> This article should not be construed as an indication that Coinbase has imminent plans to add support for Lightning. Rather, a few employees at the company simply found its potential compelling enough to research, write, and share.
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If you "prefer high quality discussion on HN", I "encourage" you to address the substance of my comment, which I will not be updating. Where is Lightning? How can I use it to pay for things I need today? Why are we still talking about solutions to these eminently obvious scaling problems in largely theoretical terms after a decade-plus during which the crypto ecosystem might have focused on solving them, but instead largely went in the opposite direction, toward a model of consumers as marks rather than as first-class users?
As an aside, from a personal (i.e. me) usability perspective, the volatility issue is a way bigger deal than the criminality issue. Even if Lightning works out, if I can't reliably store value in BTC, then it can only really serve as a fiat pipe whose endpoints will doubtless be controlled by fintech rent-seekers analogous to today's monolithic payment processors. It's possible, even likely, that they will be the same rent-seekers.
And all of this is not even touching on the energy usage issue. I've been hearing about alternatives to proof-of-work for years (seems to be a theme here); where are they? Are they even realistic, or are they just a fig leaf for an inconvenient truth about crypto's efficiency? Because if I have a choice between rent-seeking payment processors and rent-seeking payment processors with a vast and ever-growing environmental footprint, I'm going to choose the former.
I said it before, and I will say it again: the crypto ecosystem needs to grow up. If they can be better, and have the will to be better, they need to be better.
