CLUBHOUSE – A lively discussion about the benefits of BTC and the Lightning Network for enhancing self-sovereignty concluded with all the Maxis holding hands and declaring themselves totally autonomous and not reliant on anyone as long as all market actors keep pumping the price, fees don’t spike too much, someone offers LN liquidity, the routing works, the mempool isn’t too full, and they don’t need any money on any kind of predictable timetable whatsoever.
“It’s a breakthrough for human freedom. As long as I’m a slave to running my complicated node software and navigating LN I am free to maybe access my money in some unknown time period.”
It’s a rule of thumb that breakthrough tech must provide a 10x improvement over the status quo to take over. BTC+LN advocates are confident that a system that sometimes works for very high fees and very slowly will be a 10x improvement over the instant very low fee fiat systems everyone is used to.
They don’t worry about critics who say this is a terrible user experience. As one maximalist replied:
“Look, we’re not willing to make trade-offs and give up everyone running a node just for some convenience. But people are way too picky about having stuff that works well and should be willing to accept trade-offs.”
A heartfelt moment of community near the end of the discussion ensued when one participant mentioned they were in a tight financial spot due to the recent bear market. Everyone in the call stepped up and sent him some money via Venmo to be sure he could access it before he starves to death.
