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This seems overly pessimistic. 100M users in 15 years may not seem like a lot if you're talking about a tech company (even though it actually is a lot)... but Bitcoin is money which has probably the strongest network effect of any technology out there, so you can't really judge things in the same way.
When I look at Bitcoin I see a real technological and social achievement. A public decentralized ledger has been running for 15 years with almost zero downtime and miraculously everyone in the world agrees on the state of the ledger. Not only that, peoples' willingness to pay for the asset traded on this ledger has gone from <$1 to $30,000.
Sounds like a success so far to me.
Quick thoughts as I listen - I'm not an expert.. but this seems like FUD.
"Rather than trying to fix the problems with Bitcoin, the community has decided to simply ignore them and create a different set of problems with the Lightning Network."
No... to "fix" the problem, necessarily would involve trade-offs.. trade offs no sensible person wants to make on L1.
Price volatility is not a problem.. certainly not one to be solved by engineering. Price is a reflection of the subjective valuations of network participants.
The reason bitcoin is the base layer of lightning is because bitcoin is fair, secure, valuable, decentralized etc. we can't just use "anything"
There are risks of custodial services centralizing on network.. that will be up to the users.. and to the extent that creates a problem, solutions to move away from custodial services will be developed.. it's still very early on. Plus its an open and permissionless protocol.
"both parties must agree to setup a channel, that is the opposite of permissionless"
No it isn't. That's called mutual voluntary exchange.
If there is a dispute between a lightning payment, it just settles back to the base chain.. not sure of the particulars here so I could be enlightened.
More decentralization of LN doesn't mean that a transaction will have to hop through more channels.. the opposite in fact. The network is much larger, with more nodes, and we get significantly higher successful routes now.
Government could attack lightning through calling them payment services/banks etc and regulation.. yes, we'll see if they do and if they can enforce it.
I've been trying to figure out MSTR's valuation. You can't strictly compare their bitcoin holding to their market cap due to their USD debt load. As you mention, there's also the underlying value in their business. But there's no good way to square these three aspects. The best I've been able to do is cancel out their business income with the cost of servicing their debt, but that still assumes access to capital at current interest rates, etc..
In the end, it's basically a leveraged play on the price of bitcoin coupled with a short position on their effective real interest rate. Both of those are well positioned right now, but I think there are more factors at play - 61% of MSTR shares are held by institutions. These may be restricted in the types of investments they can make. Perhaps custodying their own bitcoin wasn't an option to them, nor the ETFs. In that case, buying the MSTR bonds may have been a unique opportunity that could result in an increased demand for MSTR beyond the underlying bitcoin price. My thinking is there must be more of these types of investors where MSTR is somehow their best option.
Beyond all of that, there's rampant speculation as well. Something like 21% of the MSTR shares available to trade are held short. This is actually down substantially from previous weeks. This active short squeeze is just another dimension to the puzzle, but it has definitely been boosting the share price.
Conclusion: I have no idea what Microstrategy's fair value really is.
Howdy Partners! Just enjoying the vibe and material here. Another day another cowboy hat record and sat stacking record. Living the dream!
I was thinking more indirectly but thanks for clearing up the direct impact. Although territory revenue like you said will still be paid in sats. Individual posts within the territory (my posts specifically) could be zapped entirely of CCs which is effectively a loss when compared to sat usage.
Specifically thinking about ~Music most of the posts in the territory are my content, getting territory revenue is one thing but CCs would negate the individual content posts income. However minor that is, is still relied heavily upon to foot the territory bills.
I do understand that territory fees can be paid in CCs which is great, but if we're getting a mixture of sats and CCs as payment for our content or value for our value, then are we able to pay the bill with a mixture aswell? Eg half sats half CCs?
I find the idea of sats zapped to non walleted users going direct to rewards and interesting one. Maybe in order to negate the need for CCs it may be necessary. But could you implement an automated message such as, "you've been zapped but there's no attached wallet to send them to, your sats have been sent to the rewards pool. Please attach an external wallet to send and receive sats" then maybe link a post on how to?
It is a big hurdle yes but with prompts and help, maybe it's one that can be overcome.
Appreciate your thoughts k00b đź‘Š