Bitcoin Lightning Network.
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It was amazing for a while everything worked the price was rising Bitcoin looked unstoppable.
Then in 2017 the bitcoin network was being used so much that it started to slow down taking up to 3 days to send a transaction. You could not "buy your coffee" with Bitcoin. People would have to pay a higher and higher transaction fees to get there transaction processed quicker. People became disillusioned the price dropped. Accusations of spamming the network where levelled at governments and certain other crypto currency leaders. |
Bitcoins layer 1 is like a gold bar -No good for buying coffee !
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Blockchain is SLOW !
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You would have to take your bar and cut a bit off, or post it to a dealer who will have to verify it’s genuine. This process takes a day or 3, once confirmed the dealer can send you the cash. Then you can take your cash & take it to the coffee shop. Bitcoin layer 1 transactions can take more than half an hour to confirm. No one wants to wait that long for coffee.
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Cash 💰 £ $ fiat used to be second layers on gold, until it got corrupted.
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Lightning Network & The Liquid Network are now solving scaling & speed issues. You CAN buy coffee & pay for it instantly! It may not be as secure as using Bitcoin directly, but its fine for Coffee - and you can still send Bitcoin in its original form. So if I was buying coffee I'd use Lightning. The cashier would simply show me a QR code that I'd scan with my phone. If I was sending $1,000,000 to Zimbabwe, I'd use the original blockchain and it would still cost a lot less than a wire transfer and still be way faster ( 1 Hr ).
Get your own lightning address With lightningaddress.com you can have your own human readable lightning address, like an email but for money, so anyone can send you bitcoin.
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Feel free to ⚡️ me ☝️
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Here's a very early snapshot vs current of Lightning Network visualisation
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Create a Lightning wallet the easy wayDownload the Wallet of Satoshi & get a bit coiner to "ZAP" you.
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BTC Sessions
Im no expert on lightning so here's one of the best educators in the space with many excellent videos on all aspects of Lightning.
Nostr pubkey npub1rxysxnjkhrmqd3ey73dp9n5y5yvyzcs64acc9g0k2epcpwwyya4spvhnp8 twitter.com/BTCsessions
Nostr pubkey npub1rxysxnjkhrmqd3ey73dp9n5y5yvyzcs64acc9g0k2epcpwwyya4spvhnp8 twitter.com/BTCsessions
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What you can do with Lightning ?
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Crowd Funding
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Tallycoin is a crowdfunding platform built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
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Micro Payments via the Lightning network are now possible and the possibilities are endless.
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A news website could automatically charge you 0.5p for every article you read. Without you having to lift a finger. NETFLIX could invoice & your browser automatically pay a few ⚡️sats every 10mins for watching content with a browser extension such as ALBI .com
Most people cant be bothered to sign up to various organisations for a monthly subscription so to funding a one size funds all Lightning channel as a one off - not a problem. |
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Social media with lightning integration.
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With the explosion of Nostr in February 2023 things will never be the same ! The Bitcoin community are migrating from Twitter to Nostr. Unhappy with Government & Corporate meddling, algorithm twisting & deplatforming, freedom of speech advocates have banded together to create Nostr. The combination of free speech with lightning integration from scratch is intoxicating & sure to be a winner !
Try a Nostr client such as Iris or the Damus app More info here nostr-resources.com/ |
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More Resources If you still want to learn more about LN, check these links :-
Live on CryptoPurchase Gift Cards or Mobile Refills from more than 1650 businesses in 170 countries. Get eGifts & pay mobile bills quickly, safely, and privately with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies bitrefill.com/ bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/future-bitcoin-what-lightning-could-look/ SPHINX Decentralise social media, and take back your data. sphinx.chat A deep dive into how lightning actually works with
bitcoinmagazine.com |
Play Roulette online gambling for real sats !
Be careful (I've. lost sats switching profiles) Lightning Roulette 
Pac Man with sats
sats-man Online Shops
Fun with LightningBuy bitcoin merchandise.
Bitcoinshirt.co Shop Merchandise (Bitcoin Lightning only) https://store.coinkite.com/store Lightning enabled Bitcoin merchandise https://quinsolo.com/ |
Accepting Bitcoin Payments
Rapaygo is everything you need to accept Bitcoin payments for your small business in one place.An inexpensive and simple way to use the lightning network to receive bitcoin payments in minutes.
Resources for developers
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https://orangepill.dev/lightning-guides/guide-to-create-lnaddress-redirection-on-your-domain/
The open-source Breez SDK enables developers to integrate Lightning and bitcoin payments into their apps with zero learning curve or technical expertise. https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/breez-sdk/ Mastering Lightning https://github.com/lnbook/lnbook/blob/develop/10_onion_routing.asciidoc |
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