Ride the lightning

Did you see the Coinfinity Lightning Bitcoin ATM demo? It shows two Austrian fellows demonstrating their new lightning-enabled Bitcoin ATM. One of them is so Austrian that even his shirt has virtual suspenders! The machine though, is simply breathtaking for those of us that realize its potential. One of the guys scans a qr-code, puts a 20 Euro bill into the machine and — in a matter of microseconds — 20 Euros worth of Bitcoin show up on his phone. No fee, instant. The bill-scanning takes more time than the entire transaction. This is huge. This machine converts worthless paper money to digital gold instantly. Like if your toilet had a crude oil tap.

Technologies like this change everything. The next Bitcoin will not be a cryptocurrency but a layer 2 scaling solution. In a not too distant future, all Bitcoin transactions will be instant, anonymous and virtually free. Don’t believe me? Read up on the Lightning Network. Add to this decentralized exchanges and cross chain atomic swaps. Mind severely blown — If you realize the potential that is. Those of us who do see that this is just the beginning. The true emancipation of the human race from the clutches of our so called leaders. This is no longer about politics, it’s about waking up, swallowing the red pill and unlocking the next level. It’s just a matter of time.

Time, on the other hand, is the scarcest of all our resources. No one knows how much of it they have left in this world and no one knows how much time the crypto revolution will take. What we do know though is that Bitcoin is scarce and that its scarcity will only increase as time goes by. This is what makes it so precious. What your Bitcoins are worth in dollars or euros is irrelevant given enough time. Denominate them in Bitcoin instead! One Bitcoin is one Bitcoin. It will constitute a significant portion of the worlds net worth in x years. The only question is the size of x. We don’t know if it will take a hundred years, twenty years or two months. When it happens though (and yes, that’s a when and not an if) you’d better own some.

Things like this BTM demo makes us realize that a couple of years might be a safer bet for Bitcoin to truly go mainstream than a couple of hundred. They give us hope during bear markets and remind us that the light at the end of the tunnel might not be a train this time around. To cite Rage Against The Machine: “What better place than here? What better time than now?”

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/jBHYWtd-b9g

Ride the lightning was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.