Some thoughts on this super inaccurate piece.

tl;dr: this is not a defence of Tether/ iFinex, who I would like nothing more than to see disappear into irrelevance. However, most of the conclusions here show zero understanding of crypto market

“What do you think about Ethereum?”

A question all Bitcoiners should have a good answer to when their friends and family ask them.

A few thoughts beyond the “shitcoin” meme...

The truth that ETH devs won’t admit is that they’re a bunch of tech nerds that want to hack on something exciting. Their priority isn’t to move humanity to sound money. They want to build the next big thing and feel like they’re on the cutting edge. Typical developer / SV mindset

Bitcoin is a binary bet on the whole market. There are two possibilities:

1. Bitcoin survives and goes to $10MM a coin because it is humanity’s first perfect money

2. Bitcoin is destroyed by central bankers / governments in which case ETH will certainly meet the same fate.

We know exactly what Bitcoin is.

Perfect money: Scarce. Transferable. Divisible. It’s doing one thing, and doing it well. And that one thing has enormous upside potential. Buy it, hold it, and don’t worry about it changing.

Ethereum on the other hand…

I’ve seen Ethereum change from:

- The new Internet infrastructure (lol at Blockchain replacing relational databases)
- Crypto Kitties with massive gas fees
- ICO scam platform
- “Eth is money”
- “Eth is bonds”
- DeFi platform for a bunch of two-bit startups relying on AWS

1/20 Bitcoin is too slow and expensive for payments. We all know this. To solve this problem, the Lightning network is being built on top of Bitcoin's blockchain. Will it be the end of XRP?

(Video version @ https://t.co/7zJCuKrpqx)

A thread. 👇

2/20 On a normal day outside a bull run, Bitcoin takes ~10 mins to transfer, at a cost of about $0.50. Any time network activity ramps up, those times and fees multiply. Bitcoin's Proof of Work system is painfully slow and can only handle 7 transactions per second.

3/20 To attempt to solve this problem, the Lightning Network is being developed. It's a 2nd layer network that sits on top of Bitcoin's blockchain. It's been in the works since 2015. Yes, 6 years. Do you know anybody who uses it? Me, either, but I'll get to that.

4/20 Lightning works by opening "channels" between parties. Those parties can perform as many Bitcoin transactions as needed and then close the channel. Because the transactions aren't written to the Bitcoin blockchain until the channel is closed, it's much faster.

5/20 Individual payment channels between various parties combine to form a network of lightning nodes that can route transactions among themselves. The resulting interconnections between various payment channels is the Lightning Network.

[1/13] It may be initially confusing to fully grasp how deposits and withdrawals from L1 to @optimismPBC are actually implemented, and it helps to see the on-chain action of what is happening behind the scenes.

[2/13] Initial setup (simplified): on L1 we have SyntheticBridgeToOptimism from Synthetic and OVM_L1CrossDomainManager from Optimism contracts. On L2 we have SynthetixBridgeToBase and OVM_L2_CrossDomainManager contracts.

[3/13] Additionally we have Sequencer (L2 mining node) that verifies all L2 transactions and submits them in batches to L1 for future reference and Relayer that is responsible for relaying messages from L2 —> L1

[4/13] Step 1 - Alice wants to deposit $SNX to L2. To do that she calls initiateDeposit() method on the L1 SyntheticBridgeToOptimism which takes her $SNX, puts it in the escrow and calls OVM_L1CrossDomainManager sendMessage() method.

[5/13] The CrossDomainManager puts this request to CanonicalTransactionChain (this is an “official” and “unmutable” list of all L2 transactions on L1). As a consequence the Sequencer (L2 mining node) will need to execute this transaction on L2.