Some time ago on the Blockchain Cruise, Charlie Lee and Roger Ver had a very interesting talk about cryptocurrencies, scaling solutions and the cryptocurrency world in general. During the conversation, Charlie Lee defended the developments that are being done on the Lightning Network while Roger Ver defended Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Roger Ver is an important figure in the crypto arena. He was a strong defender and supporter of Bitcoin, but during the last year, he decided to support Bitcoin Cash, a fork of Bitcoin that has bigger blocks. Charlie Lee instead is the creator of the popular virtual currency Liteocin (LTC).

Ver said that Bitcoin Cash was the real Bitcoin because it has most of the definitions included by Satoshi Nakamoto in its white paper. On the matter, he said:

“If I asked a thousand people about their thoughts on Bitcoin in 2011, they would say that sounds stupid. I didn’t give up, I was persistent and today digital currencies are changing the world. Being persistent is how you change the world and get things done.”

Later on October 6, Charlie Lee decided to explain on Twitter the differences between on-chain Bitcoin and Litecoin payments. He said that both Bitcoin and Litecoin payments are not peer-to-peer. Additionally, he said that when a person sends Bitcoin or Litecoin it needs to be sent to miners that record it on a distributed ledger.

The second tweet he wrote says that the broadcast network is person to person but strictly talking the payments are not p2p.

2/ The broadcast network IS p2p, but strictly speaking payments are not p2p. The sender can ignore the p2p network and directly communicate the transaction to miners to send payments. The sender doesn't have to have any communication with the recipient in any p2p manner at all! — Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) October 6, 2018

With the Lightning Network, it is possible to make these transactions without the sender to intervene. He explained in the following tweet that this is a good thing since the recipient does not have to be online to receive the payments.

Later, he commented that on chain payments are more similar to a hub and spoke model. The mining pools are the hubs and the users need to connect to these hubs to send the payments, he explained. In this hub and spoke model every party involved has to be connected to the network for it to be processed.

Then he said that as Lightning payments are peer to peer, they can work if the peers involved are disconnected from the internet.

About it he wrote:

“Because LN payments are peer-to-peer, hey can work if the peer involved are disconnected from the rest of the internet. The sender can even send payments directly to the recipient by just having a direct connection without relying on any other parties at all.”

After all, Litecoin’s founder said that Satoshi’s vision is reflected in Bitcoin with the Lightning Network.

Clearly, Roger Ver and Bitcoin Cash supporters do not agree on this issue. However, it is always positive to create a space to debate and propose common solutions to different problems.