Jose Lemus | Connect the World

What was your first experience with the lightning network and do you still know what you did/saw at that moment?

First experience was wallet of satoshi. I thought it was magic. Still remember it was a test transaction with my brother.

What is the biggest difference between seeing Bitcoin as an asset and when it’s legal tender, like in El Salvador?

The biggest difference honestly is how it gets treated for tax and accounting purposes.

In an IBEX podcast you had (with Esteban de la Peña and Alvaro Sol) a year ago you said, and I quote: “Without money, you can not envision the future. You need an incentive to not only live for today, but for the future. If we attack money, or the properties of money: scarcity, durability, fungibility, divisibility, and transportability, then we are attacking the bedrock on which our society is built!”

You made an appeal to international regulators to stop attacking money. Is this still a huge problem?

It is, and what’s even more worrisome is that the attacks are more frequent and more aggressive. We as a people have to really stand up to the politicians and let them know that it’s not ok and that we do not agree with the policies that are being pushed.

The developments on the Lightning Network go at an immense rapid pace. Do you think Lightning is the key to banking the unbanked or do we need something else for this?

I believe it’s half of the answer: lightning is definitely the tech to do so. But fundamentally we have to understand that the reason we’re not banking the unbanked is not because of technology it’s because of regulation. There are already tremendous efficiencies out there that could be leveraged to bank the unbanked but are not being used because regulators do not permit it. The other half of the equation is the will to bank the unbanked. This means political will but if this is not available we need the human/humane will to do it. This may be where lightning has to shine.

Your Chief Strategy Officer, Alvaro Sol is from El Salvador and I heard him say once that Bitcoin/Lightning is the reason to come back, and that there’s an opportunity of a generation! So thanks to Bitcoin there now is an incentive to come back or to stay.

If more developing countries are embracing Bitcoin and Lightning, what will this mean for those countries, their people, and their economical states?

Lightning and bitcoin are the great levelers. Every once in a while (not often) a technology comes along that is so transformational that it basically cleans the slate and nobody has any a priori competitive advantage. We believe that bitcoin and lightning are such technologies. What this means is that those states and people that adopt them have a chance to significantly improve their quality of life and their socio economic standing in the world.

Will the more wealthy western countries fall behind on technological developments that they can no longer catch up with?

Maybe. I wouldn’t expect all of them to do so. These are at their core decentralized technologies so I no longer think it’s helpful to think in terms of whole countries specially in freer societies like the USA where you can adopt these technologies at a community level. So I dont think its about countries anymore, it really is about people and communities and the willingness they have to opt into a global decentralized monetary system.

What is the biggest problem with the Lightning Network that needs to be solved in the short term?

We still have a lot of work to be done in terms of usability, scalability, security and reliability. So you can take your pick.

Seeing Lightning as a working capital asset and earning yield could also be very important for increasing adoption. It could also make Lightning beneficial for bigger companies.
Do you think there will be more possibilities for yield generation in the future?

It depends how far into the future you want to go. I believe in the short term there might be opportunity for yield generation by funding channels/nodes but longer term I think this will not be tremendously significant. I believe longer term it’ll be more about the microservices you’re able to run on your infrastructure and what value add can you deliver to the end customer. Very similar to email.

Do you think it’s possible that Bitcoin and Lightning can fix the money and the world without being the only medium of exchange?

Absolutely. In fact I don’t believe they’ll ever become the only medium of exchange strictly speaking. However I do believe that they’ll be the settlement layer for all mediums of exchange. Just by providing that final judge that every other medium of exchange has to measure itself against is enough.

How important is self-custody in the future when more people are being banked with Lightning? And do you think there will be an easy way for people in the future to still be able to choose for self-custody?

Self custody will always be important and it’ll become increasingly more used. That is not to say that more centralized solutions won’t be needed/available. Centralized systems can deliver a level of convenience / functionality that self custody just cannot match. So I see a future where this is a spectrum where your savings and long term holdings will be self custodied but day to day spending funds will probably be held at custodied platforms/solutions.

You talked about the problem with brain drain, meaning losing talented people to other countries with more possibilities. In what way are Bitcoin and Lightning the solution to this problem?

I don’t think they necessarily offer a solution to countries. In fact, I believe that some countries that have never faced this issue they’ll have to contend with it. What happens is that there is now this supranational organization called the internet that is able to attract the most talented/creative/inspired/inspiring people because it can now pay them. So what happens when people start moving their creative/productive efforts into this space that current jurisdictions and jurisprudence can’t touch? It’s still to be seen. BTW this is also why I believe Bitcoin has already won. Its market cap is nothing compared to the amount of brain power that’s moving in.