LN is trustless? seriously. stop reading the reddit promo material and actually do research.
1. you need to trust the other parties wont blackmail you for signatures.
2. theres a thing called autopilot that can send YOUR funds without your consent,
3. because its offchain people can alter their node to hack your funds and then at the end change it so you sign first (they gain the revoke) so if you then try to send a double signed tx to the blockchain. they can then revoke YOU. meaning YOU get punished.even if you were the victim of fund hacks.
have you even bothered to get an explanation as to the 'dont put too much coin into LN mainnet because you can lose it' (advice LN devs gave themselves)

LN is permissionless? wow please do some research. stop promoting something that you have not researched
1. you keep trying to make it out as if its just a channel opening handshake agreement thats required like tcp communications.. its not
2. LN does need permissions. for every payment. it is NOT a PUSH payment system. (learn push payments)
3. even if you run autopilot. making you the human not the permission giver.. the channel counterpart still needs your nodes permission (learn multisig)
4. you cant just say 'hi im A im paying D' and thats it. B, C and D need to agree on it if you are using the hop of 3 channels earlier example to get to D
5. as for no third party. again learn multisig. then learn why they want to bring schnorr into LN toallow fund managers to monitor the channel closes when people go offline(yes it will be a thing)
6. nodes CAN exempt you from participating.. after all.. those core fanboys have proven that already when they showed the meme of an LN node they named Rogerver being left exempt from the network. ill give other examples when explaining fungibility next

LN is fungible? again, you must be joking,
1. when creating a route some route decide rules, such as not wanting to connect to nodes of certain value, meaning some funds are treated differently and not accepted
2. its like saying 'i only wanna channel with you if you hold a $50 bank note. sorry if you only have a $10 bank note, goodbye
3. then its like 'ok you got a $50 bank note, but if your not willing to swap it in daily amounts of $1 then i got no use for you'
LN is not as connect to anyone anywhere for any amount.

please i really do think you should do some research. i mean this sincerely. really look beyond the glossy promo material and actually research beyond their buzzwords.

and if you still think that LN is better than the fiat system research what CLTV and CSV actually enable as features from the prospective of users.
here is a hint.
CLTV=3-5 business day funds locked on wire transfers(closing channels)
CSV revoke= chargebacks
sound familiar to the fiat system

good luck in your research, have a nice day

firstly im not in any band camp... just because i detest blockstream and the crap they heve done. does not throw me into any other coins camp

secondly craig wright is a scammer
i have made many many posts highlighting that craig wright cant prov crap, doesnt own crap, is in alot of legal trouble and has alot of explaining to do to many investors he defrauded with his trusts and tax grants

but hey.. i have read your posts over the last year and you seems to have blind faith that core are the masters..
i think that maybe if you take a few steps back and you will see that instead of trying to push people into being conspiracy nuts and altcoin lovers. you will see that some of us are trying to defend the real ethos of bitcoin. which has been eroded away slowly over the years with all the distractions of things like craig wright and all the altcoin creations by saying they are attackers. purely to slowly hand more power to core to control and direct a roadmap

but hey. you keep on reading reddit and keep on spreading the buzzwords of the month. just realise that all your doing is pushing people away that oppose one team.. meaning pulling only one team into the lead.. (definition of centralisation)

slow? pfft. it was only december/january it had its OUT OF PLACE / UNNATURAL all time high..
regain? again it was out of place, un natural
dont treat a spike as "the norm"
dont hav price charts open at a 3 hourly zoom, waiting and checking several times a day for that top price to return like its something that always existed that has just temporarily left the building for lunch


smart traders do not care about the all time high. thats just speculation bubbles and volatility.
whats important is finding the lows. and if lows of today do not go lower than lows of 6-12 months ago.. that is the true win for traders.

while small minnows are waiting to double their money waiting patiently for the next all time high to be double the price the minnow bought in at...
sharks and whales are chomping on small and repeated 1-5% movements. which if you add them up turn into doubling funds in less time the minnows wait for.

looking at different resistance points.
mining had a cost resistance point at ~$8000... which got thrashed and pools/miners reacted at the start of march by holding off on adding hashpower..
but it seems a month later on the 30th of march their mindsets changed. some pools decided to reduce thier hashrate due to costs.. while other pools have put their pedal to the metla and actually increased their hashrate for the first time in a month.
so something seems to have stired their speculation to have made them react.

as for the price resistance point of day traders. past lows had a ~$6000 resistance. and this has been tested hallf a dozen times but not got below. so it seems we might be close to seeing the day traders give up trying to test the low and accept that above $6k is a good safe bet for the new bottom.. and then work up the courage to start spculating the bull. to then test the highs

only time will tell, but it wont keep bouncing around the $6k-$8k forever

funny part is
when a user sells crypto to get AUS$10k/US$7k and withdraw's it to a bank account..
the users own bank see's that the account holder has received 'suspicious amount'...

so the authorities will get the exact same report about the person even if the exchanges were not involved. purely because the bank account of the user will do the reporting.

banks already have the ID of account holders. so if exchange does a withdrawal of AUS$10k to Joe blogs with a comment 'sell of cryptocurrency'
what the bank would report is the exact same info about joe blogs as what the exchange would report.. 

coal, oil, gas generation of electric has costs. and the more that is used the more it costs. plus its not environmentally friendly or sustainable

solar generation of electric has cost and time limits. where it can only generate for an average 12 hours a day. but is limited to the amount of panels set up on land. its ok for low use, but when large peaks of usage occur quickly solar cannot cope

wind generation of electric has costs and weather limits, where it can only generate acertain amount at low wind and certain amount at high wind. aswell as the limits of how many turbines are set up on land. its ok for low use, but when large peaks of usage occur quickly wind cannot cope


where as geothermal is more stable 24/7 generation of energy. infact it costs geothermal companies more to switch off some of its gnerators when demand is low. so they prefer to have them all running. and thus offer a constant supply. this is why some miners love iceland. they can calculate how many ASICS they will manage month by month and set a contract to buy electric by the month/year. knowing the electric supply will be constant and stable (unlike solar/wind which can fluctuate) and is environmenally friendly(unlike coal/oil/gas)

if the crypto they want to advertise is a scam coin ICO that has no REAL 5-year sustainability plan.. screw them. let them be banned

places like google/facebook/twitter should not be held liable for advertising scams. so its these social media's rights to refuse to advertise scams that can make them liable.

.. also..
bitcoin didnt need advertising, didnt need to pump and dump, premine,
bitcoins ethos and ideology alone promoted itself without the help of tactics that scammy ICO advertise

real funny part is..
if a ICO owner thinks that not being able to advertise will lose them money. then they have no clue.. after all. their premine is THEIR MONEY. so they are not losing it if they are the ones creating it.
if they value THEIR coin so much. they can hoard THEIR coin and then find a real purpose for their coin to then have real demand via the purpose. not via a pump and dump

1. the bitcoin whitpaper is no longer relevant to todays protocol.
2. the rules have changed
3. the development is centralised to one team (distributed but not decentralised)
4. yes money is not the same trusted thing it was 50 years ago. not since it lost its gold swap promise
5. think about why people hate fiat, since it started losing all the original ethos/features of 50+ years ago. and you'l see my point about bitcoins mutation(offspring) losing the bitcoin ethos too.. making bitcoin brand no better than fiat in the end
6. you admit you are not your dad, even if you share the same surname...... think about that. your only the same in namesake only

sticking with your family analogy
to me, i care more about the heritage and the honour of what family name MEANS. it seems. as long as you continue having offsping(mutations) and the name passes on you dont care what it gets upto or what disregard to the families honour it may have.

seems too many have the mindset of 'screw it let a team own the protocol, as long as the brand name continues we dont care about the utility or function of the token as long as the brandNAME stays popular by advertising it, we can kill its utility/function...
... now thats exactly how governments dealt with FIAT 50+ years ago, people are duped into thinking a dollar today is the same dollar as 50 years ago, where people are duped into thinking fiat holds the same values, trust, etc.. which we all know is not the case

but the real thing i hate is over promising and under delivering.

as HeReUK points out about the insecurity of not using the blckchain. if its not logged on the blockchain. then there are risks about trust and other issues. and yes LN has risks and trust issues too. its not trustless, not permissionless, not immutible.. oh and its not fungible. just like paperwallet swapping offline is not trustless(yes i planted reverse psychology and he fell for it).
and as HeReUK says, whether he realised he was contradicting himself or not.
"some other forms of communications channel as a means of data exchange."
bitcoin does not need the internet. it can function on a completely separate network, without TCP

but thats my rant over about your meandering away from the fundemental point of the topic.
bitcoin could have retained its ethos and not slowly via misdirection lose all its promises (like fiat lost) to evolve as a network of multiple teams using consensus to unite the community. rather than avoid consensus and do the whole opposition deportation (controversial bilateral fork).

any way.. if your interested in how to rip people off and get free funds from people via LN. ill leave this here for you as just one example of LN flaws
P.S purple, red, green and orange are all 1 person(1 person, 4 nodes) attacking blue to double their money.

  
thre are many other flaws. like because LN doesnt rely on community auditing of payments while channel is open.. LN user(B) can tweak their node to get user (a) to sign first. but then B refuse to hand over B's signature. thus blackmailing A into broadcasting a older tx in the hopes of getting something. which B then gets the right to send out a tx he just signed to revoke A and to activate the penalty against A..

i could go on
i seen LN as a small side service for a niche use case and not as the be all-solve all solution to scaling. and i dont see LN as a fit for purpose tool even for that small niche right now.. it has too many risks..
which is why im not a fanboy that over promises over promotes and suggests its the best thing ever, when its not.

but hey
ill stick with my opinion that bitcoin(the promise/ethos/function/purpose) has deminished. and you stick with your opinion that the promiseless BRAND still lives..
but atleast you should accept that they are completely different things

decentralisation has died, long live distribution

the commodities market gamble the price of wheat.... yet muslims have bread
driving a car is a gamble of having an accident.. yet muslims drive cars
forex trading is the same gamble. yet muslims use money
having sex is a pregnancy gamble. but muslims try the 'pull out' method alot

unless your stood at a poker table shouting all my sats on red
unless your a day trader
its not a true 'gambling' scenario

atleast the tooth brushing idea thought outside of the box to reduce risk of fake 'mining' by having ways to check a task is actually done by a sole individual

seems better than an idea last year about a fitbit 'jogging' miner.. which ended up with people just selotaping their fitbit to their ceiling fan to fake movement for free 'points'.

my opinion is that the january drop was just speculation bursting from over hype.. just like 2013

as for now its not investor confidence. but ico scammers exiting back to fiat plus a mix of day traders testing the lows to find where the new bottom resistance is, to then go to bull

blockchain its the technology....

things like commodities, assets, financial tokens or anything that has a financial value is a currency thus if that is 'traded'/transacted using blockchain then it would be classified as cryptocurrency


cryptocurrency is the type of 'data' (of financial value) that is put on the blockchain

however if there was a blockchain that just stored chapters of a book, or patient hospital notes that had no financial value.. then although its data is distributed on a blockchain. that data is not cryptocurrency. its just data

its just trying to re-test february 5th's LOW.. if it cant get much lower than feb 5th's low. then the traders will be confident they have found the BOTTOM resistance and then will change plans.

if it drops below feb 5th's low, then they will retest november 12ths low.  if it cant get much lower than novmbr 12th's low then the traders will be confident they have found the BOTTOM resistance and then will change plans.

only time will tell

bitcoin does not need TCP
i can write a private key on a piece of paper and screw it up into a ball and throw it at you.. you then get the funds without needing to shake my hand or agree or require me to ask you to sign for anything.

if i seen your bitcoin address.. i dont need your signature, your permission your agrement for me to send funds to 33jr6swgJxHwyFTgXKcv7kbKSy4du8Yt8r

i just send it.
but with LN. EVEN after finding the route/path and hand shaking to create a channel/route... that is not the end of handshaking.. EVERY payment needs the other person to consent/sign/agree to be a party of that payment. the more hops required the more people needing to agree to it and sign something

please do research.

but anyway.. trying to bring this topic back on topic..
decentralisation is dead, long live distribution

i edited the part where your understanding has a grey area that you seem to not have researched enough

if you imagine a block as 40 lines on a lined piece of paper (each line being 100kb)
legacy tx's can only sit in the first 10 lines of a piece of paper.. never able to sit in the other 30
thus the 10 line (1mb) restraint still exists

segwit transactions cannot put their entire transaction in the remaining 30 lines
segwit HAVE TO put the first half of its tx in the same first 10 lines of space that legacy tx's sit.. just to be able to gain access to the other 30 lines
thus the 10 line (1mb) restraint still exists

yes segwit are also affected by the 1mb limit..
its only the witness that gets to use the other 30 lines of a page/(3mb of a block), not the entire segwit tx

PLEASE DO RESEARCH - it will really help you out

in short. segwit "could" use upto 4mb of data. but that does not mean bitcoin gets 4x the amount of transactions
so please do some research as to why segwits 4mb is not the same as 4mb legacy blocks.. i think it will surprise you

OP
best thing to do is not grab random amount..
instead split the chart into 6 monthly segments and then grab the ALL TIME LOW of each period. then draw a line. and you will see its always in a upward trend.

grabbing highs are just speculation/volatility. but the lows have more meaning in regards to where people find true value that they refuse to sell below

topic title is about "blockchain" not "bitcoin"..

but anyway it doesnt really need sophisticated smart contracts for the list i done.
also smart contracts are not about blockchain technology, but about transactional tech

sophisticated smart contracts can make things happen even if the owners node is switched off as they are self activating after the fact, on the network
however even just using <bitcoin address><value> people can make bitcoin wallets that react in many different ways. without neding smart contracts at all so the list is not something which cannot be done today

as for the future, ANYTHING is possible and the list would be too big to write

but here goes sticking purely to blockchain tech
sidechains -  instead of one chain/archive of data. there can be many regional archives of data that are then archived by a ultimate chain
hashchaining - instead of blocks of transactions/ cleartext data, blocks of hashes which separately/offchain has meaning/utility
command chaining - instead of transactions. commands can be chained

avoiding 'currency' usage:
voting
law creation
land registry
identity
credit rating
school qualifications
manufacturing/supply control
asset audits
public notaries
patent timestamping
time limited licence application/renewal/acceptance

the list goes on

i have been playing with multisig and even off line fund management for alot longer the LN was even buzzworded. i have seen the limitations of LN play out.
LN is not the sole solution that everyone will need/use/have desire for. LN is not unlimited and is not permissionless

that quote from hearne is about at a certain point a party can say im no longer going to sign cheques for our joint account. its time to go and withdraw the cash from the bank and close the account (wording it in ELI-5 banking terms). it has nothing to do with only one person needing to sign. while in LN. every payment needs 2 signatures
and if your part of a route/hop/hub then further agreements and permissions are needed.

yes there are niche markets that will utilise it as a 2nd layer service. but to assume or think everyone will use it is a foolish notion
once you start realising that CLTV is in old english banking term '3-5 business day fund lock after wire transfer' and CSV revokes are in old english banking terms 'chargebacks' you start to unveil what LN service really resembles..

other things like
[a:$60<->b:$60]       [b:$60<->c:$60]       [c:$60<->d:$60]
if A wanted to spend $60 to buy something from D
A has to get B to sign [AB] A also has to get B to sign with C in [BC]  and A has to get B to get C to sign with d in [CD]
thats 6 signatures that need to be signed just to pay D
(a*1 b*2 c*2 d*1)
.. also once its taken place it looks like this
[a:$0<->b:$120]       [b:$0<->c:$120]       [c:$0<->d:$120]
now.. B cannot buy anything from C or D bcause B has nothing left in[bc] to make an agrement with C or to use as collateral to get c to agree with D
C cant buy anything from D either.

so there are issues (many many others but i just use the easiest to display and understand in ELI-5 format as a demonstration)

.. anyway

as for the future.. with blockchains constraint (fear campaign) being "gigabytes".. there are already solutions coming out where instead of hashing transaction chains and making transactions of 9 years ago(so far) immutable.. instead what will happen is UTXO sets will become hashed and thus the transaction chain can be pruned off.
other things like a new fee formulae that charges say 1 sat if a person only spends their UTXO once a day but 144sat if its spend every 10 minutes
thus rewarding frugle spenders and punishing spammers that want to fill every block.

there are many ways to solve things onchain without the fear of "gigabyte blocks" and without reverting back to banking with managed accounts... there are also ways to solve priority and punishment of transactors. all without having to deposit funds into a multisig that requires someone elses agreement to what you want to spend..

firstly onecoin wasnt even a crypto.
secondly i think all the bcash, bgold, bsilver and all the alts are just the same as clams.. a fork of bitcoin
and yes i even think that bitcoin core is a fork of bitcoin

as for the campaigning.. i think that if only 'the community' used consensus to stay united to evolve one network instead of making factions and giving up decentralisation by leaving it in the hands of only one team per coin. then things would be better.

i am not defending bitcoincash nor bitcoin core. i am just a supporter of the original ethos of bitcoin which was decentralised scarce peer to peer currency with near free transaction fee's. which pretty much every single descriptor i have just mentioned has been eroded away and then masked with the illusion of still existing with crafted buzzwords and misdirection

as for the future.
popularity will move. hell it could even end up that litcoin could become the coin thats accepted by millions of merchants(charlie lee + coinbase relationship hints that possibility). so for me its not even a fight between bcash or bcore.

its a fight for whatever future coin is nothing like fiat but offers a better storage/usage/access to funds than fiat. something that excludes no one, extradites no one, something that doesnt make it harder of one groupp or easier for another group. something that anyone can be equal with another person when it comes to "control".. which bitcoin has lost