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Anybody can run a lightning node. I intend to do so.

It's not like PayPal where if you want to pay using PayPal you have to use PayPal-the-company. With Lightning, if you want to pay using Lightning you can use any route you like over the Lightning Network to reach the recipient of the payment.



If you run your own LN node, your channel is associated with your IP, and your transactions are associated with your channel. It is the same as reusing a single bitcoin address for all your transactions, with all the consequences [1], except this time you can tracked down to your physical location. In vanilla bitcoin you can at least generate addresses at will, while opening and closing payment channels every now and then undermines the whole idea of the off-chain transaction layer.

[1] - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse


if you don't want your IP associated you can host anything on a cloud provider, run it through a tunnel, VPN, or TOR.


Good point, but since there's no obvious reason Lightning Network couldn't work over Tor hidden services, I expect that to happen in time.




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