It’ll settle eventually

bring back split flap departure boards

the lightning network still uses the blockchain, just less. it’s acts like an immutable public bar tab you can’t default on. once you have spent enough with another person that it is worth them conducting the transaction on chain then it does it. usually when fees are low too.

That is an extremely simplified explanation of how it works though, it is more complex than that.

Edit: another analogy i have just read is it’s like cashing in at a casino. you put some money in the house (the blockchain) and get some chips, you go in and transact with loads of people, then when it’s advantageous you can cash out and get your BTC on chain; to the house that is two transactions, cash in and then out, rather than a transaction for everyone you exchanged with on the network. that’s probs a better analogy than the bar tab one… but again, oversimplified

bar tab is more accurate, casino is easier to understand.

the actual functionality doesn’t really matter to the layperson though. basically, you put some of your bitcoin on the network (minimum amounts apply), and then you can spend that with very fast transactions and low fees. when you’re ready you can send what you have back to the chain

i got back into bitcoin recently and decided to move the contents of my old wallet to a new SegWit one and look into using lightning.

To open a lightning channel i have to stake £170 up front though which is crazy, how are people in poorer countries supposed to do that?

or even here. poverty is on the rise, a lot of people are living hand to mouth and just having that kind of money lying around isnt a thing.

i like the idea of bitcoin but i worry it doesn’t scale well.

Add to that that virtually nowhere accepts it. The value of bitcoin comes from its use as a currency. if it doesn’t have that then it’s entirely speculation.

oh well, i have £2k in there and i’m not turning it back into fiat. I’ll spend it if i can or ride it all the way to 0 if that’s the way it goes

edit: if BTC does hit $1m a coin as the hodlers hope then that would amount to $2000 to open a lightning channel (or more realistically $2400 as electrum wouldnt let me open a channel with the supposed minimum 0.002 BTC, i had to make it 0.0024). I hope that the minimum amount to open a channel will be updated long before that happens though, but i guess we’ll see