I do agree with most you have said there, but I do have some minor discrepancies:
I pretty much agree with everything you have stated, see below:
- LN is the real scaling solution. The only way to compete with other payment systems like paypal (great for online purchses), credit/debit cards (great for in person purchases and also online in some way), or cash. All three are inmediate and the cost is reasonable or even 0.
Agree completely. Until Bitcoin can match this ease of use and low friction, it can't compete.
But.... LN is not ready YET. I think many of us overestimated its development status when -almost half a year ago- thought it be the final push into mainstream readiness for Bitcoin. At the same time, maybe also underestimated the rate of new users/investors that were to come in the following months.
LN being behind schedule is disappointing seeing that we were being told by devs that it had been fully tested, was ready to go, just needed SegWit. That turned out to be misleading by a mile, and upset many of us.
I won't blame the multiple attacks Bitcoin has and keeps receiving because that was something more than expected. Bitcoin has to be resilient to those attacks, to the FUD, to the growth... We can't expect attackers wait till we are ready to fight nor users/adopters to just hold on... not if there are alternative choices that could be taken.
Agree
I have always said that whilst LN is the only scalable solution it will also need a *minimal* increase in blocksize of the underlaying blockchain.
Agree and Core has said as much. The trolls and BCash shills like to ignore that fact.
IF we can agree with that (maybe some people don't agree, it seems) AND unless LN is already around the corner (which it seems it is not).... why not do that small blocksize increase now as a temporary fix for the current network congestion (a fact... whatever the multiple causes including intentional spam) in the meantime?
Not disagreeing completely, but the spam attacks have completely muddied the waters on that one. Thanks to the spammers, no one can get a clear picture of what the network traffic truly looks like right now. And when spamming is not happening, backlog and fees are low, in many cases completely reasonable. So that does not bode well for the 'raise the block size' argument.
No, the fees don't impact me that much.... at least not directly since I am mostly a hodler. But I have run out of arguments to advise people why they should buy Bitcoin instead of some other altcoin UNLESS they plan to buy in big chunks (like at least one full BTC). I can't give anyone some small BTC gift and show them how great and easy it is to USE it. No, if I want someone to show the tech I need to resort to something like LTC or whatever shit so I can show them the process of having a wallet, transfering and controlling their own coins etc...
That's sad. Maybe that is how it need to be. And I can't complain about the gains I have been having lately... we are doing great yeah... But... is this really sustainable in the long run?
I don't disagree entirely about the tech use. But take an honest assessment for a sec. Do you friends or family really want to get into Bitcoin for spending, or are they really interested because they see the gains and want in as an investment? I don't know a single person that was interested in Bitcoin (for any reason) when the price was either going down, or just sat there doing nothing. Not one. They truly did not care just to USE it for spending.