You hear about Lightning all the time, but did you ever use it? Just do it. It proves bitcoin is already able to be the world's payment network.

It's easy to become skeptical of pronouncements about massive new developments that are caveated with "and the real world applications will get there eventually." For example, the Lightning Network as secure off-chain settlement to solve Bitcoin's scaleability. Always sounded reasonable, but many, many years have passed since initial proposals and nothing ever seemed here or stable.

Someone tipped me with lnbot the other day for a comment posted, and I thought as knowledgable as I've been about bitcoin for a long time, I have no idea how to claim something that is legitimately built on the bitcoin network.

So I do a little investigating for a Lightning compatible wallet. Critical for me is:

• open source
• non-custodial

Came across the usual lists of recommended wallets and dug deeper into Muun. I am blown away. Not only does it meet those two criteria, it's just simple, fast, and does exactly what I didn't think would be possible with LN - it makes it so you don't have to think about it.

I click "Receive", I click "Lightning" and just like any bitcoin transaction, you get a QR code and I withdrew my sats from the lntipbot. That's cool and all but what's important is how can someone get their on-chain bitcoin onto Lightning, so it's ready for its actual use case of buying coffee and whatnot. I have to set up a channel right? Or find someone to open a channel with? I have to manage how long the channel's open? Invoices? Eh? Bitcoin's simplicity vanishes... but no!

Muun's whole philosophy is you get one balance. So I hit "Receive", then "Bitcoin", then I send like $10 worth to it. Now suddenly, my Muun wallet has a balance of the tip from before and the btc I just sent, no distinction. I don't know what's on chain, off chain, but it doesn't matter!

I then hit "Send", "Lightning" and deposit $5 into the Reddit lntipbot. It works! I definitely didn't have $5 of LN balance, but it sends instantly all the same.

This is how it's meant to be. The security, distributed protection, and rigid scarcity of Bitcoin, but versatility to handle microtransactions globally. The only reason bitcoin is not every country's default currency is people's ignorance and the intentional or unintentional misinformation spewed by those with power to lose.

It's worked since 2008. It works even better now. The technology is here. You don't need complex custodial financial constructs like ETFs and derivatives to own it as an investment and you don't need 1,000s of other pointless cryptos to use it for small payments. Try Muun or some other Lightning wallet and start using it. This just feels game changing, and it shouldn't have taken me getting a Reddit tip to figure that out.