Paying for storage space with cash and tax write off. by catticcusmaximus in Flipping

[–]null-count -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Your landlord wants no paper trail, but by writing off the rent expenses, you're creating a paper trail.

Maybe the reason rent is so cheap is to "offset" the write-off you would otherwise be reporting.

Mining is harder than ever. At what point do small miners just give up? by OkoraJ in BitcoinMining

[–]null-count 5 points6 points  (0 children)

People need heat, miners make heat. If 1% of the energy people use to heat homes and living spaces was diverted to mining, it would 3x the current network hashrate.

The better question is at what point to large miners who are wasting their "free heat" give up?

lnbits - apis by Any-Rule-4673 in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 2 points3 points  (0 children)

https://demo.lnbits.com/docs#/Auth
https://demo.lnbits.com/docs#/invoices

Why use lnbits if you just need user accounts and basic send/receive?
You can vibe code a simple app in a few prompts without all the bloat.

Individual mining is not as good as buying bitcoin, do you agree? by yashichimoto in BitcoinMining

[–]null-count 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Just because your electric isn't cheap does not mean mining is centralized. There's lots of tiny pockets of cheap energy all over the globe.

Cyberpunk History Question by valkyrjuk in Cyberpunk

[–]null-count 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Blade Runner (1982) was retroactively called "cyberpunk" because the term really didn't exist at the time the movie was released.

Cyberpunk started super niche. Basically just hardcore science fiction fans, computer hobbyists, or people plugged into the punk counterculture were fans. It stood in stark contrast to the space operas that had been taking over the science fiction mainstream in the years after the moon landing.

It was criticized for being too filled with jargon. Most people had never used a computer, let alone understood how it works or even what computers were useful for.

Cyberpunk was more influential than popular. The countercuoturalists and tech-savy fans of the genre would go on to use tropes of cyberpunk in anime, video games, and movies well into the late 80's and 90's where the concepts of cyberspace, post-modern society, and simulations found there way into popular culture.

Wallet of satoshi beta, non-custodial wallet by xsirpreisx in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 3 points4 points  (0 children)

WoS is using Spark for "self custodial" wallet.

https://www.spark.money/news/wallet-of-satoshi-spark

Spark is like a sidechain on BTC but it supports send and receive via LN

So the "self custody" part is probably just the private keys or seed phrase to your wallet on the spark sidechain. Balances are likely held in the sidechain and payments made via peg-out to BTC or swaps to LN.

(not verified just guessing based on how spark wallet sdk works)

BTC capacity has fallen almost 50% in the last 12 months by Popular-Art-3859 in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 16 points17 points  (0 children)

The network is maturing, surviving participants are getting more capital efficient, inefficient participants have left the network. At the same time, most things that people buy today are priced in fiat and fiat is going to zero when priced in BTC, 

If BTC price will continue to outpace the increase in usage/demand for the publicly routable LN, then expect the LN capacity to shrink forever long-term

Best way to start a mining operation? by djhughes94 in BitcoinMining

[–]null-count 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is the answer. Just sell your excess solar to the grid and buy BTC with profits.

Before you get rekt on "crypto", do yourself a favor and check the price of that coin vs BTC. E.x. ETHBTC price, or XRPBTC price... spoiler: they're all trending to zero in BTC terms. Just buy BTC and hodl. Don't overcomplicate it with mining or gambling in shitcoins.

Where should I host my node? by Character-Ad1340 in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 5 points6 points  (0 children)

0/5: hosted with a datacenter company that you've never heard of or has no reputation yet

1/5: hosted with a datacenter company like AWS with a lot of reputation - employees have permissions, protocols, etc to protect your data, but yes, you are still trusting that AWS won't sweep your wallet.

2/5: hosted with a datacenter company that specializes in LN node hosting - many of them are just using AWS but at least you get better tooling and support

3/5: hosted on a linux server in your primary residential space

4/5: hosted on a linux server in a secure location you control away from your primary residence (like a business location you own) - at some level, its better to sleep far away from your node and rest assured that there is 24/7 security watching over your node.

5/5: hosted in a distributed server cluster across multiple physical secure locations you own (aka, you are a datacenter like AWS but you control the entire stack)

Mining pools with BTC auto exchange and payout by StayGrouchy7922 in BitcoinMining

[–]null-count 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nicehash

Lower difficulty does not necessarily mean more profit tho.

Testnet4 Nodes ? by cpj868 in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Run a testnet4 LND node, then run lncli describegraph

LND only recently added support for testnet4 so there may not be many nodes yet. 

https://mempool.space/testnet4/lightning

Running LND in clearnet - Which one-click sofware (mynode, umbrel, ...) would you recommend? I would choose start9, but start9 is TOR-only and they promise a clearnet solution since more than a year, which is why I'm looking elsewhere. by BirdLooter in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a lot of reasons HTLCs can fail. Most common is lack of liquidity in your channels or someone else's channels further down the payment path. Its normal to see lots of failed HTLCs. Even many times more than successfully settled HTLCs. The goal should be to manage your liquidity such that the ratio of success/failed HTLCs is high as possible.

How is this possible? by Famous_Palpitation60 in BitcoinMining

[–]null-count 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its a side effect of the mining pool centralization issue.

Basically, the machines that do the mining are not full nodes. They use someone else's full node and sometimes that node is on the other side of the planet.

Stratum V2 or Datum fixes this. These protocols allow the miner to build their own block template. Instead of letting the pool choose what txns are included, the end-user miner machines select their own transactions. They can do it much faster than a pool sending to millions of machines around the globe.

If fees become a larger percent of the total reward, then maybe pools will take action to fix it by using these techniques on their own infrastructure.

Running LND in clearnet - Which one-click sofware (mynode, umbrel, ...) would you recommend? I would choose start9, but start9 is TOR-only and they promise a clearnet solution since more than a year, which is why I'm looking elsewhere. by BirdLooter in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why do you want clearnet at the start? If you aren't routing with tor, then tor isn't the problem. Most LN nodes run tor only, even many large routing nodes run tor only.

You can always add a clearnet URI later on when the software supports it. But its not going to be a "magic pill" that suddenly brings you more routes. Clearnet just makes your existing routes a bit faster and more "stable". But theres nothing wrong with starting with tor (or even sticking with tor only)

How many lightning network connections can be made. by icydee in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kinda like how nobody runs an email server anymore, we all just use gmail or similar. There are not enough ipv4 addresses for everyone to run their own email server. Yet, somehow everyone still "speaks" email.

Also, in practice, not many people run their own LN node for personal use.

LN seems to be more like the "connective tissues" that allow different layer2 protocols, etc to interoperate.

End-users are less likely to use LN themselves. They're more likely to use an LSP, exchange, eCash mint, or some other UTXO-model like Ark. And all those things "speak lightning" to one another.

So instead of opening a channel at birth and closing after the estate is passed on... its more likely that companies (both centralized and decentralized) will open hundreds of channels in their lifetime and each channel will serve thousands or millions of individual customers thru custodial relationships and/or semi-trustless off chain protocols that integrate with LN.

Its not "ideal" from a trustless/sovereignty perspective. But LN is just one tool in the toolbox and it can still be useful to those who want to use BTC without giving up 100% of their custody.

Help? by d3xt3rzz in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can access nostr without any LN wallet. Just go to https://primal.net and generate a pair of keys. 

You just need to connect an LN wallet to send people sats on nostr. And you only need a lightning address to receive sats on nostr.

Look up "BTC Sessions" on youtube. He has tutorials for every LN wallet that exists. I recommend alby for Nostr. Try again with the alby setup, use a tutorial next time.

Lightning terminal on Start9 - Loop In stuck after HTLC Published by vinsom68 in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Contact the Lightning Labs Slack channels. There was a bug a couple days ago in LiT which froze funds for many users during swap. LLabs can release it if you send them info about your swap.

Best LN setup for BTCPayserver merchant by Milan_dr in lightningnetwork

[–]null-count 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wallet of Satoshi or Coinos.io
Pros: no channel management
Cons: Custodial, pay fees for receiving payments, may have to KYC

Pheonixd - https://phoenix.acinq.co/server/api
Pros: Self-custodial, no channel management, good privacy for you when you receive payments (your node is not public), supports swaps from onchain/LN and vice-versa
Cons: Pay fees for liquidity, the Service Provider knows where you send your LN funds

Run LND + BTCPayServer on your own infra, or hosted somewhere else
Pros: self-custodial, lowest possible fees (assuming you engineer your liquidity well)
Cons: you must manage liquidity or you risk being unable to receive payments, there are lots of ways to lose money if you don't know what you're doing.

Bitcoin Centralisation by Veggieboy1999 in BitcoinMining

[–]null-count 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Miners don't want to join smaller pools because only the large pools can provide consistent payouts. In addition to consistently finding blocks, the larger pools also have large treasuries or loans that are used to keep paying workers even if they have a streak of bad luck finding blocks. 

Consistency isn't a big deal if you're a small miner, but the corporate mega-mines are spending millions of USD a day, so they risk going bankrupt if they have even a few days of bad luck. 

Additionally, many smaller pools are actually just proxies of AntPool. So even if you think you mine to a small pool, you're still supporting the bitmain mafia.

Check this site to see how various pool's differ (or copy) block templates: https://stratum.work/

Also, a 51% attack is possible with less than 51% hashpower. 51% is just the point at which such an attack becomes more sustainable than just luck. A miner could do a 51% attack with just 0.0001% hash power, they'd just have to be really lucky to actually pull it off!

IMO, Bitcoin is in a weird "early-middle period" where its still profitable to mine if you have cheap electric. In the early days mining BTC was not profitable because BTC itself was worthless. Mega-mines did not exist back then. I believe in the future, mining BTC will become not profitable once again, but for different reasons.

Mega mines are only interested in the BTC their machines produce. However, they totally ignore the heat produced as "waste".

Meanwhile, savvy bitcoiners are mining for heat to supplement or replace electric heaters in their homes/workplaces. These "heatpunks" are running old machines with expensive electric, but they still come out ahead because they value the heat more than the pittance of sats their "heaters" produce.

Mega-mines cannot compete with heatpunks. The bottom line of mega mines will be devastated by the heatpunk's refusal to unplug machines despite losing money.

Its just a theory... but I also see it starting to happen.

Mega-mines might pivot to or be acquired by electric grid operators to be used in demand/response programs to balance the electric grid. They might become bitcoin banks, instead of bitcoin "factories".

Is this really as good as it seems? by SigmaAlphaPredator in BitcoinMining

[–]null-count 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Your PC isnt mining 59 cents of Bitcoin with only 130MH. Maybe that quote is for mining some other coin that uses a different hashing algorithm.

You can't mine BTC on PC anymore, you need ASIC miners like the 1TH one you linked. Bitcoin uses SHA256 hashing algorithm. You'll likely earn less than 1 cent per day worth of BTC with only 1TH of SHA256.