Category: crypto news

People not familiar with the Crypto world often tend to lump all cryto-currencies together. They’re all based- on the blockchain, right? And developed by tin-hat wearing, twinky-eating geeks?

Well the latter argument may arguably be correct. But Bitcoin – and the associated Lightining 2 network that has been created to enhance Bitcoin’s know weaknesses (slow transactions / high cost) for everyday currency transactions – is very different from the 20,000 – odd altcoins that have surfaced in the last decade.

In this superb article, A Look At The Lightning Network, written for the brokerage Swan Bitcoin, the brilliant financial expert Lyn Alden, explains what sets Bitcoin and Lightning apart from all other cryptos.

The differences between Bitcoin and all other altcoins are quite dramatic, and have caused almost a schism in the crypto-world that approaches the vehemence of religious wars in the late 1500’s.

I’m not a Bitcoin purist, but I do lean heavily to that camp in this great philosophical debate around the future of money. Read this article to find out why Lightning adds the missing link to Bitcoin. Together, they are laying the foundation for what I believe will become the monetary base of the future global economy, after the US dollar falls from its throne.

While marveling at the simplicity and brilliance of the concept Satoshi Nakamoto came up with a brief 13 years ago, a nagging fear persisted that Bitcoin might crumble once it hit preset supply limitations n 2139 – and probably well before that.

The concern: what gives Bitcoin its robust security is the mining system at its root, and the decentralized nature of that mining system. What happens when the rewards paid to miners drops exponentially at each preset halving? Wouldn’t that cause hordes of miners to stop mining? Wouldn’t that lead to a concentration of mining rigs into fewer and fewer hands and expose Bitcoin to the possibility of fraud through a 51% attack?

The solution that Nakamoto had conceived was rewards through transaction fees. Bitcoin followers have debated long and hard about the sufficiency of those fees to incentivize miners. Here’s a great Twitter feed that goes far to allay concerns about such incentives:

Bitcoin blocks are like container ships

Read it and let us know what you think.