In the U.S., you can put up to $250,000 in a bank account in the certain knowledge that you will get it back. Or a bank deposit account that is backed by a fully-funded deposit insurance scheme. it has a built-in insurance policy in the case of disputeJust like a deposit account, then. Yes, so does a bank account. So now we’ve established that there is no significant difference between a Lightning channel and a bank deposit account, can we agree that Lightning channels are IOUs?

Source: Forbes April 21, 2018 12:45 UTC