Recently I've gotten into the local bitcoin scene in Helsinki. There was a lightning network meetup at a bar that accepts lightning network payments. I knew Hive account@brianoflondon's V4Vapp that allows payments of lightning invoices via HIVE and HBD. Tried it the first time, and indeed, I managed to get myself some beer with HIVE via bitcoin lightning network. Now you can upvote me to subsidize my further beer purchases, haha.

The scene is quite small here and there were only four of us at the night, but really bright with some indepth technical know-how about bitcoin and lightning. One long-term IT guy especially is quite the builder who plans to make an out-of-the-box solution for businesses to accept lightning payments. And the cashier solution in the bar was kind of a pilot for that product. However, the actual bitcoin meetup is a bit bigger, so I've heard. I'll see it, if I manage to attend there next time.

Bitcoin versus Hive as a settlement network for payments

I know many hivers won't like my opinion, but I believe bitcoin is the currency that has the real chance to become the cryptocurrency for global adoption for commerce. While Hive's baselayer is fast, I believe it is not as secure and robust as the bitcoin network. And bitcoin's base layer won't need to be fast, because it'll scale with layers, like lightning, for payments. Bitcoin base layer's most important function is to be secure and consistent.

Hard Forks

Contrary to the bitcoin network, Hive evolves its software via hard forks. This is a faster type to evolve, but it also exposes for more things to go wrong and more downtime.

Bitcoin since its inception has been down exactly two times in 2010 and 2013 for a total of under 15 hours in its existence.

At the time of writing, bitcoin has been up for 3567 days, almost 10 years.

Hive certainly has been down more than bitcoin, and while the hard fork hiccups have always been able to be sorted out, they always bring uncertainty for a foreseeable future, which simply isn't acceptable for a globally adopted monetary network used for the settlement of payments. Is the world going to adopt a network that might become unusable for 24 hours because of an update? This is an obstacle that I unfortunately can't see a way out. Hard forks always bring uncertainty.

However, some downtime isn't the end of the world for a social network, which I think is the main function of Hive: to provide a platform for free speech. Thus, I believe Hive should not compete with bitcoin as a global monetary base money system even though at surface level it might seem suitable.

Yeah, lightning network isn't perfect, but it has slowly gotten better over the years with growing liquidity and I believe it'll continue to improve.