Definitely not. The standard amount of Bitcoin I use to open a lightning channel is 1 million SATs or 0.01 Bitcoin.

Depends on how fat your zaps are on average :D

If you want to route payments, yes. But that is pointless and unprofitable these days. If you just want to send/receive your own payments + sovereign zaps in nostr, then you really only need as much balance in channels as you plan to move around. I’d say 100k sats is a solid amount to start. You can purchase a channel with inbound liquidity from an LSP, or open your own channels with liquidity swaps etc. If you already run a node it’s a very fun project to do lightning as well… LN is awesome!

Wonder why it didnt publish my comment. You don’t need nearly that much, the normal amount to open a channel with is about 1 million Sats which is 0.01 Bitcoin, not half a Bitcoin.