SpillpratInnskudd og uttakKryptoIs Lightning Network free?
Is Lightning Network free?
Just bought a bit of bitcoin, about 5000 kr, through a Norwegian exchange. Set up a wallet and tried to pay at a cafe that says Lightning, but the app showed a fee in satoshis before I sent. Read online that Lightning is free. Is it?
Lightning is not free, but it is so cheap that for small payments it feels like it. The fee you saw is a routing fee paid to the nodes that forward your payment, and it depends on how congested the network is and which path your payment takes. Many nodes set a base fee of 0 satoshis, so the charge is often just a tiny fraction of a satoshi per transfer.
But that is not the whole story. Opening and closing a channel costs on-chain bitcoin fees, which are the real cost. Some wallets hide this by managing channels for you, like Muun or Phoenix, so you never see it.
Others, like Blue Wallet, let you open your own channel and you pay that on-chain fee directly.
Jobbet i bank i tjue år, flyttet til krypto for å se andre siden.
For a coffee, the routing fee is basically nothing. It is when you move larger amounts, like over 1000 kr, that the satoshi fee starts to add up.
Use your own wallet. The exchange is not your friend.
One BTC on Lightning is exactly the same as one BTC on-chain. It is just a different way of moving the same bitcoin. The number does not change because you use a payment channel.
Background in payment infrastructure. Stablecoins aren't stable, they're pegged.
Lightning is as safe as the wallet you use. The biggest risk is that you are responsible for your own channel state. If you lose your phone without a backup, you can lose the bitcoin in that channel. On-chain funds are safe, but channel funds are not automatic.
Kjøper dippen, selger topper.
It is legit. I have used it for over a year to buy coffee and pay a VPN subscription. The main downside I have seen is that sometimes a payment fails because no route is available, and you have to retry. That takes a few seconds. Lightning is not anonymous either, it is pseudonymous, so the cafe can still see your wallet address on the channel.
Ran a mining farm back in the day. Never again. Volatility isn't risk, it's certainty.
When all 21 million bitcoins are owned, it will not change Lightning fees directly. Miners will rely on fees, so on-chain sends might get more expensive. That makes Lightning more important for small payments.
I have run a node for two years and earned about 500 kr in routing fees, so the fees are real but small. Blue Wallet, Muun and Phoenix are popular in Norway. Muun and Phoenix manage channels for you, Blue Wallet makes you do it manually.