sorry for late reply.

to mitigate risks.
when the casino accepts zero confirms.. they do a few things.

1. they know that when you deposit. your then playing in their house. so while the tx is confirming they can make you lose yor game or hold ot on the withdrawal until the deposit confirms.

2. while unconfirmed, they look at the inputs (where you got the funds) for tell tell signs of risk of it not confirming. EG low fee. or spotting you simultaneously writing a second transaction using the same inputs. opting for RBF, seeing if in the inputs if there was any sign of you trying to double spend before. etc etc.
but point number one is usually the case.. dont pay out unless deposit confirms

what if i told you:

there was code that stopped people writing messages into the blockchain to help make blocks only contain lean transaction data.
there was code that stopped people respending funds for 1-6 confirms to stop spamming the blockchain with the same funds over and over.
there was code that allowed millions of people to transact ONCHAIN without bottlenecking the network because there were no bottlenecks..
there was code that allowed the ONCHAIN  possible bottlenecking to open wider at a healthy and natural rate over time.
there was a balance that as unbottlenecked demand increases, pushes the bitcoin valuation up so that pools get more fiat for their blockreward.. so that fee's remain just an insignificant 'bonus' for all of the next 120 years

in short
what if code solved all the things that 'fee's were introduced to prevent' so that over 120 years (not days or weeks) the fee did not have
to rise sharply.

now with that in mind.
what would you consider as a happy worldwide no barrier of entry acceptable fee price?

incentivising them is not easy or even advantageous..

all that will happen is 1-2 corporations running 20,000 nodes all running on AWS each, to grab the incentive.. then the 5000 oldtimers who are left with nothing, will feel that they are not being paid and (unknowingly) think the network is secure with 20,000 nodes.. so they would switch off.

leaving the network in the hands of 1-2 entities and the copies of the blockchain in a centralized single location (amazon service).

the problem with incentives is. rich guys pool their resources to get a leader advantage and claim a majority of incentives.
just take a look at the future industries that 'invested' in trump and now going to become the leaders of their industry with nice large government grants heading their way.

incentives do not mean better security.

though it can be seen as fast 'processing'.. if the method for customer to get into a channel with <retailer>, locking in enough funds. and then only using it do a weekly shop... then i don't see so much of an advantage. (even using the multi-hop feature)


i see it having great utility for faucets, google adsense, kimDotcom, satoshidice gambling..
but the occasional spender who only does 4-42 transactions a month.. current concepts of 10day channel sessions and fee/penalties are not going to be "consumer friendly" for the retailer.

its like a retailer has and customer need to keep closing and opening a new 'bar tab' every fortnight. just so they can process payment in miliseconds. even if the customer only spends once a week..

its not really the utopian solution for everyones spending habits so should not be seen as the 'solution' for bitcoin.. just an addon service.. like BITGO have...

lol oh look "pay someone to watch your channel"...

and there he was just a couple sentences before pretending its not turning it into a MANAGED system..
end of rant about that person. who i dont want or need a reply from

i will say his last paragraph about people switching off fullnodes due to prefering to just use an LN node. is a con and valid con
i will say his other paragraph about theft can happen and is a con and valid con

funny how i said those 2 cons to him awhile back.. but atleast he is accepting them as threats to bitcoin/LN users. the awakening has begun


anyway ontopic

strange thing is that the flaws can be coded out to not require fee's, bribes, penalties, or management, supervisor costs... but instead its just another fee based model that cares more about economics than bug fixing using code.

though in concept.. one LN dev went to the extent of making a spreadsheet about all the penalties, costs and profits. and highlighted to utilise just for 10 days required a 0.006btc (~$4) prpaid buy-in/deposit) fe just to use LN to cover possible costs of using it. where it only become 'cheap' if doing thousands-their estimate of 80,000 tx in 10 days. (i facepalmed: no average consumer would accept)

---

again. if people treat LN as a SIDE SERVICE and are fully aware that funds are no long in sole discretion but instead dual signed (managed) and that fee's are involved. much like a bank.

then it gives people a clear and open minded choice to use it.

but to try suggesting it should be 'the solution' for bitcoins future and then under-admit the flaws, just to sell a utopian dream... thats where issues start to begin.

the issue is how well its programmed.

some are seeing one LN using economics (fees) to penalize users for extortion, DDoS, closing channels early etc.
some are seeing one LN using code to prevent users for extortion, DDoS, closing channels early etc.

so its still too early to judge the public release, and we can only talk about whats in design and try shouting out the flaws so that the public release is functional and not stupidly engrained with things that are a barrier of entry.

pro's:
a free choice to sit beside bitcoin for those doing high transaction volumes such as gambling/daytrading/faucet raiding.
not to be used as a scaling future direction. just a tool those doing high volume can use.

cons
possible prepay fes and penaltyies to use, causing barrier of entry
stupidly considered the future direction of bitcoin by shifting people away from immutable transactions.
requires dual signing (permissioned funds) which puts users back into the 'banking' managed systems

find positive news articles.

alot of fiat lovers would trust bitcoin if they seen the government positive about it. where senators, ministers mention bitcoin positively

http://www.afr.com/technology/senate-committee-says-bitcoin-should-be-treated-as-a-regular-currency-20150731-gior3u
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/10/rand-paul-bitcoin-presidential-campaign-donations

you could also search out local retailers that accept bitcoin.


then you can show him how many times FIAT has failed people
credit card hacks
pick pocketing
ransoms

thus showing bitcoin is a currency like anything else. its just not understood because its still early and has yet to grow
then give him about $10 of bitcoin and tell him not to use it. but instead hold it and check the valuation every few months.

when the price goes up ask him is it more then the 0.01% interest rate he would have got if he just had $10 in a bank account

based on first line of squares

QSWSEECPZ
or
OGQGKKSGR

young grass hopper
a bonzai tree may only grow 2foot. and so would require a forrest of bonzai to feed all the leaf cutter ants onroute.
but a 300ft redwood is stronger than a forrest of separate bonzai and can feed all the ants. as long as you let the redwood tree grow.

the problem is not that bitcoin cant scale.. its that bitcoin is being prevented from scaling by.. HUMANS, especially those in the pockets of bankers
bitcoin doesnt need to be XXXmb tomorrow.. it can SCALE naturally and DYNAMICALLY as time passes over the next 120 years.

the funny part is
holding back scaling, while then crying bitcoin needs to go sideways because it cant scale.. is like a self fulfilling prophecy

you prophecize that tomorrow you wont be able to walk on both feet.. because you shot yourself in the foot the night before.

as others have said bitcoin is decentralized..
i feel the idea your trying to convey as an issue is:
"blockdata diversity"

your complaint is everyone has the same blockdata.

even if that data is distributed / decentralized. (no single location of attack).. by everyone having the same data the data is not diverse.

i know what you are trying to get at.
where your thinking that blockchains should work as sidechains.. where each sidechain is like a bankbranch with its own cluster of customers and keeps it own records.

meaning blockchain FARGO shows blocks of transactions of americans.
meaning blockchain EURO shows blocks of transactions of europeans.
meaning blockchain HSBC shows blocks of transactions of easterners.

all linked together by a gatekeeper blockchain IMF

rather than
easterners hold and uses blockchain B.
europeans hold and uses blockchain B.
americans hold and uses blockchain B.

to answer your topic question.. yes it is possible to do sidechains.
but then the issue becomes who are the gate keepers. who created the genesis block of each sidechain.
whats securing it.

lastly. instead of say 130,000 ASICS protecting bitcoin with 440,000 hashes that need to be hacked just to be able to steal satoshi's stash...

imagine people moved funds over to sidechain LQD which is secured by only 12 people in a multi-signing POS hub.. you are sacrificing alot of security measures for their LQD features.

so although possible you need to realise what your losing, what headaches it may cause and what advantage you are gaining.

LN is sacrificing autonomy and replacing it with permissioned payments (dual signed authorisation)
side-chains opens a huge kettle of worms.

ONCHAIN is where the private key holder has sole signing control.

LN is dual signing control. where 2 peers have to work together and agree on what they both should sign/deserve.
(much like a bank/credit union... joint bank account) meaning you are not in sole control.
however they can refuse to sign their part to cause you hassle, but in a joint account/LN you too can also refuse to sign and cause them hassle. so there is (although can be maliciously abused) a economical incentive to both not lose out

exchanges ask you to hand them funds. although exchanges can be social/moral to pay out what is deemed you deserve there is no power by you to refuse, veto them keeping it, and now power blackmail them to sign funds back to you. its literally 100% theirs.
('deposited into MTGox:' "aaannnd its gone!")

exchanges can do fractional reserve. like MTGox, cryptsy, cryptorush, etc. where they pretended to have funds to let people play around on the order books, but the actual bitcoin were else where. (hacked/spent on penthouses who know)

LN is not as straight forward. but yes with the right amount of confidence talking to a naive person you can (not quite) fractionally reserve, but scam your level of collateral to profit elsewhere.

EG
say you paid in 2btc into a LN between you(a) and someone else(b)
you hand (b) 1.999btc for an item. but dont close the channel. meaning you only have 0.001 to your name.. but nothing is showing this onchain. and you now have goods/service to the value of 1.999
now forget about (b) he no longer important...

you then seek out a naive user(c) and because they dont know about LN. you show them the 2btc setup ((a)(b)onchain) tx and claim that as your collateral and saying you have 2btc to your name(yet reality is only 0.001).

you get (c) to open a separate channel with you and request (c) pays in 2btc because you convince them that if they hand you X you owe them Y... (c) pays in and now you hold (c) funds hostage by not signing unless (c) hands you a blackmailed amount.

all because of the myth that you had 2btc collateral.

its not strictly fractional reserve. but its using evidence of funds that dont belong to you to financially gain by faking how much you are actually worth.

Craig wright done this(not as an LN, but as a FIAT banking con/scam). by faking he had 1mill bitcoins to then grab hundreds of millions of australian dollar. even though craig wright didnt own any bitcoin

because in LN the multisig has 2 addresses.. you can sign a message to say that you are involved with that multisig.. which is one confidence layer extra than what craig wright was ever able to do.

again
even if the funds are now technically (b)'s.. showing an outsider the 2btc ONCHAIN exists in a multisig that you can sign a message linked to an address inside the multisig, can get you further than craig wrights 'scam' got him.

use mempool.

the reason to not use tx fee as the indication is that the tx fee is no longer 'reactive' but instead its now 'averaged'
meaning if a time period had 2500 transactions then the next time period had 0 transactions. the 'estimated fee' would go down due to low demand on the old 'reactive' metric. but due to 'averaging' the tx fee remains high even when theres no transactions waiting

here ill show you.
imagine the demand was average.. a block can take 2500tx and is happily seeing 2000tx. and lets say for 24 blocks people pay 0.0001 just for the sake of it.

now imagine the next block(25th) averaged 0.00250 fee due to a fee war maker. even when tx demand is low.. .. here is the results of what the "average" metric does to the estimated fee, simply due to one block with a high fee, triggering it


EG
block26 is not 0.0001 again. instead it goes up to 0.000196 due to 1-24 at 0.0001 and 25th at 0.0025
block27 goes up goes up further because theres only 23 blocks at 0.0001, a block at 0.0025, and now a block at 0.000196 swaying the average up
block27 goes up goes up further because theres only 22 blocks at 0.0001, a block at 0.0025, and now 2 blocks over 0.000196 swaying the average up

so even without actual tx's waiting.. the fee estimator (fee war game) is causing issues unrelated to actual transactional demand.

note. the example above is not the code concept of bitcoin. its a demonstration that averages rather than reaction to demand, can affect the price and has little to no correlation to demand

the result is HEX not ascii.

hex only uses 4 bits per hex 'character/digit' not 8 bits per 'character/digit'
so
FF in binary is 11111111
its not 11111111 11111111

so FF is one byte not 2 bytes

in short hex is more 'binary efficient' than ascii because you can fit more 'character/digit' per byte, compared to ascii

even people that love core want dynamic blocksize. the only argument they can come up with though is that they would only TRUST gmaxwell to write the code for it. they are even screaming to tell the community that core never said no to a increase of the base blocksize, they just waiting for gmaxwell who proposed a dynamic blocksize LAST YEAR!

afterall the altcoin dooms day myth has been busted. all that will happen is an elevation of possible orphan rate due to how small or large the minority is (hense 95%+ acceptability to implement). making under 5% (under 250 of 5000 nodes) not sync and need to upgrade.

afterall the bloat doomsday myth has been busted. 4mb bloat is acceptable

so the solution/compromise is obvious. core tweak their segwit code to 2mb base 4mb weight.. call it 0.13.1b release it alongside 0.13.1 and let the community choose to download either 0.13.1 or 0.13.1b

atleast if everyone happily downloads 0.13.1b segwit also gets activated by default too.
if there is no desire of a jump in base block.. then no one will download 0.13.1b and it wont activate. meaning no harm either fanboys just download 0.13.1 instead

but simply preventing even letting the community have the release to even have a choice under their 'trusted' brand they wont run away from. is no longer the right course of action

then. when activated and we have more REAL capacity because the buffer has increased. that gives alot more time to code new features instead of these stupid delays

or your missing the even bigger picture, the one outside of the box.

dual-signed permission payments that are not same day(usually 10min-hour) immutable transactions as bitcoin.
also requiring prepaid fee's just to use LN and penalty fee's for 'spending' once inside. and penalties of closing the service early or not agreeing to sign efficiently.
(it boggled my mind all the penalties the LN creators are dreaming up to make hubs(bank2.0) profit)

anyway, you need to really look at what the ethos of bitcoin was designed for. and then look at what its being switched into.

and all i bet you can reply with is "it cant compete against visa's 1billion customer base next month without LN".
to which i will reply. we dont and wont have a billion users using bitcoin next month we dont need to be at that rate next month or next year

let alone not having to worry about 1 billion users.. bitcoin is not even accepted in all the locations visa is. so the transaction count is less.

EG Visa handles on average 42tx a month(for each customer) for a billion customers
bitcoin averages people do 1 transaction a week for about 2.5 million bitcoin users.

what we NEED is to get passed the 2.5million average user utility we are limited at, and get to lets say a 5-10million user utility short term. then grow naturally as bitcoin grows.

1mb =2.5m users doing genuine bitcoin transactions
1mb =260,000 users doing comparable transaction utility to visa

2mb base 1.6mb witness(not combined weight) = 9.1m users doing genuine bitcoin transactions
2mb base 1.6mb witness(not combined weight) = 940,000 users doing comparable transaction utility to visa

again bitcoin is not spendable in all retailers so forget the visa stat(42 uses a month). knowing an average bitcoiner only uses bitcoin once a week
moving to dynamic segwit blocks(with a safe 2mb base 4mb weight) allows for 9.1m bitcoiners to do what they do on average.
moving to restricted segwit blocks(with limit 1mb base 4mb weight) allows for 4.55m bitcoiners to do what they do on average.

i would say going to 4.5m-9mill average user capacity while remaining in the 4mb weight, which core deem safe, is an achievable goal short term and allows more users to use bitcoin. or a quarter of current bitcoiners to start spending 10x more often than usual
without hidden fee's and penalties like LN is promising hubs(bank2.0) can profit from

the block reward is the income.. the fee is the bonus.. the switch over when fee's become important wont be for a few decades.
also research has noted that due to the energy efficiency of ASICS and the average amount of asics used to confirm a block, the block reward alone is making pools PROFIT. not loss. (im guessing IC3 probably used worse case scenario electric and asic costs. not rational values)
in short pools are making a profit, not a loss

so fee's are not a subsidy. again they are categorized right now as a bonus.

lastly. the delays of segwit and the fee war have caused a fee price hike. so the mindset of segwits 'discount' proposals last year would have been 4 cents discounted to 1cent.. but now reality of only 1.8x capacity (not 4x) and todays average fee.. is:
7cents discounted to just shy of 4cents
or your 11cents discounted to just over 6cents. which is not really the proposed and hyped 'discount' price expectation given last year.

with the new 'average fee' rather than reactive fee metrics, the fee will be higher by the time segwit is activated. so in no way, shape, or form can anyone expect to pay under 4 cents even after discount and still gain 'priority' based on a low priority transaction before adding a fee. 

and now you see the economics problem the bankers of blockstream are pushing for.
their solution is then dual authorisation offchain payments... hmmm... and i wonder who will be running these hubs.

duel authorisation.. hmm thats what banks do.. sounding familiar?

so segwit(wuille) and LN(rustyrussel). are coded by guys that are paid by banks. trying to pull people away from bitcoins immutable and independent blockchain into dual-authorised payment methods with fee's attached........ im surprised im even having to spell it out for people

anyway. back on topic.
fee's need to stay practical at only a few pennies/cents at MOST. to not cause a barrier of entry (world wide).
CODE needs to strengthen the 'spam guards' not fee's
scalability needs to grow naturally and eventually AFTER DECADES of growth cover the mining cost burden, not months

this news is 3 years old.
this topic should be put in the trash just like the hard drive was over 3 years ago.

as for answering the op question..
the coins were spread over a few addresses. in 2009. and then ended up in landfill before 2013. news started reporting in 2013 that should he have kept the coins/laptop. he would have been a multi-millionaire

your thinking more like a banker that only lives and thinks about america... try opening your mind to borderless whole world utility

over the next 120 YEARS. not days.


the hearn clan is actually the same as the blockstream clan.. i guess you didnt know that hearn R3.. gmaxwell, wuille blockstream are working together.. that was the ultimate bait and switch.
go look at gmaxwell and wuilles contract and employers. oh look BANKERS
yea even gavin(DCG) and garzik(BLOQ) are now in the banker pockets too... more bait and switching..

so far Ver is the only non-banker-bought independant.
as soon ver trades in his morals.. (hopefully never) and all the 'wallets' are in the pockets of bankers.. bitcoin is no longer independent.
you can stick your head in the sand and defend a banker buy attacking others as a distraction or ignorance of which side your on..

and im starting to think its the bankers (R3,DCG,blockstream) group thats spamming the network to try advertising the need to get everyone to activate segwit. but worded the opposite to blame ver, as the bait and switch to scare people over to segwit.. like a double con that hearn played

economic fee war and fee market are buzz words of the bankers.
CODE should solve the problems not fee's.
fearmongering scenarios of decades-century as the need of economic measures now is a failure to understand logic, code and technology.

when the bitcoin valuation reaches a certain average the minimum fee should be dropped
EG
the fee was averaging under 1 cent in 2012.. 0.001 @$6/btc (0.6cent)  (100sat/byte)

then the fee went down to 0.0001 (10sat/byte)
....

soon it should go down to 0.00001 (1sat/byte) so that when the fiat valuation goes above $1k the tx fee is still 'pennies'
then in future it should go down to 0.000001 1sat/10byte so that when the fiat valuation goes above $10k the tx fee is still 'pennies'
then in future it should go down to 0.0000001 1sat/100byte so that when the fiat valuation goes above $100k the tx fee is still 'pennies'
to atleast keep the minimum tx fee in the 'pennies' rate.

we dont need to worry about that now.. thats a thing that can happen naturally over DECADES, when it becomes needed. not a current issue.
at the moment blockreward=income.. fee=bonus... in DECADES it flips to fee=income reward=bonus. and in a century it becomes fee only.
so not an issue.

also more ONCHAIN transactions by scaling ONCHAIN will solve it.
after all do you want 4500 people paying $3 a tx each in 30 years because core kept the base block at 1mb for 30 years.
or have something like many thousands of people paying 3cents max because over 30 years scaling was allowed ONCHAIN

after all we are talking ATLEAST SIXTEEN years to a century in the future before fee's become important. if you go backward 16 years you will see the evolution of technology and know that things can move further in the future. so crying now about 64mb blocks in the future... is like:
at the millenium crying that 1mb is insane and wont be acceptable in 2016..
or back in 1984 crying that 15kb not being acceptable at the millenium.

EG
lets say 2017: 2mb base 4mb weight = 9000tx (yea i know dreaming that core give in to a version of segwit with dynamic baseblock, i know i know)
lets say 2020: 4mb base 8mb weight = 18000tx
before you say it.. calm down.. even in africa vodafone are starting 5G networks so it will be the norm by 2020
before you say it.. calm down.. fibre cables are starting so it will be the norm by 2020
lets say 2024: 8mb base 16mb weight = 36000tx
lets say 2028: 16mb base 32mb weight = 72000tx
lets say 2032: 32mb base 64mb weight = 144000tx

and then take into account a scenario of the block reward
year      BR            Fiat/btc      block reward value
2012      25            $120         $3,000
2013      25            $240         $6,000
2014      25            $400         $10,000
2015      25            $480         $12,000
before you say it.. calm down.. lets say we dont quadruple value in 4 years
2016      12.5         $700         $8,750
before you say it.. calm down.. lets say we dont near double value in 1 years but instead only double every 4 years(safe worse case scenario)
2020      6.25         $1,400      $8,750
2024      3.125         $2,800      $8,750
2028      1.5625      $5,600      $8,750
2032      0.78125      $11,200      $8,750

now we put it together assuming the tx fee stays around 6cents (as a worse case scenario for next 16 years)
year      BR             Fiat/btc     BR value   tx count   txfee      bonus      total(BR+fee)
2020      6.25          $1,400      $8,750      18000      6c         $1080      $9,830
2024      3.125         $2,800      $8,750      36000      6c         $2160      $10,910
2028      1.5625       $5,600      $8,750      72000      6c         $4320      $13,070
2032      0.78125      $11,200   $8,750      144000      6c         $8640      $17,390

or we go with a core doomsday
year      BR            Fiat/btc      BR value   tx count   txfee      bonus      total(BR+fee)
2020      6.25         $1,400      $8,750      4500         24c      $1080      $9,830
2024      3.125         $2,800   $8,750         4500      48c      $2160      $10,910
2028      1.5625      $5,600      $8,750      4500         96c      $4320      $13,070
2032      0.78125      $11,200   $8,750         4500      $1.92      $8640      $17,390

knowing tech wont be a problem in 16 years.
would you think bitcoin is best kept at 1mb base for 16 years costing people $1.92 to use bitcoin. for only 4500tx every ~10 minutes
would you think bitcoin grow ON CHAIN naturally for 16 years costing people $0.06 to use bitcoin. allowing 14400tx every ~10 minutes

obviously who would use bitcoin if limited use and nearly $2 a time..vs less limited use and 6cent a time.