Just had the "aha" moment with Lightning Network

Holy crap. Just withdrew a tiny amount of money from tips via the tipbot going around, and the withdraw was near-immediate.

It's so smooth and quick, it felt seamless, I'm confident that I have the coins in my ownership (currently closing a channel to see what it looks like), and I'm loving the experience so far.

Things I found out so far:

• Eclair wallet is pretty good. Offers the ability to set up a channel with ACINQ nodes.
• Initial experience was intimidating, but once I set up a channel I was all set to spend via lightning
• Was not able to receive BTC via lightning at first, but once I spent a few cents I was able to receive that much
• Requested the ability to receive more. It cost me a tiny amount of money for this feature, but I can now receive up a lot more (worth paying a small fee for them to lock up funds to allow me to participate)

I'm happy to answer any questions, but please realize that I am limited in experience so far.

Also, I have a few questions of my own:

• Can I set up a recurring invoice via lightning?
• How trustworthy is ACINQ? I don't have anything major locked up with them but I do have a small amount I'd like to not lose
• What happens if I stop participating with ACINQ? Will they auto-close my channel since they have locked up BTC doing nothing for an extended period of time?
• Does Eclair have the ability to connect to a lightning node that I set up myself via a Raspberry Pi? Do I need to run a BTC node first?

Thanks guys, happy bolting!

Also, if anyone would care to post an invoice for 5 satoshi, I'd love to send you a trivial amount of BTC to test a tiny transfer.

submitted by /u/zomgitsduke
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from Bitcoin - The Currency of the Internet http://bit.ly/2Ux5nHj