Since there are no walls to watch, and price discussion gets boring during sideways skating, let's talk about an issue that I'm afraid will resurface in due time: blockchain spam.

At the moment, the situation is peaceful. Spam has vanished, and tx fees are back to sane levels. There have been several explanations offered for the end of spam, most of which are plausible or have some merit. It might be that it was too costly to sustain the attack. It might be that someone is moving shop. It might be the attackers became afraid to push LN towards success. It might be that Coinbase withdrew support by fixing their unforgivable withdrawal arrangement (either intentionally or simply as a consequence of other choices).

The point is: most of the people on this forum believe they know who the attackers were and why they did it. For the time being, they are defeated. They might or might not have another try at it. I am concerned with a future when some more powerful opponent delivers a spam attack - backed by the full financial power of a small (or large) nation. That could be an expensive way to shut up the bitcoin network, but it can be fairly successful, especially If you can eat up the loss and hide it inside a large budget by slightly cooking the books.

I think we need someoneto come up with a partial solution to the spam problem. My guess is: if such a remedy is ever found (which I'm totally not confident about), it will be a game theory person to deliver it.

Don't talk titties to me, man. One thing I sorely miss from the everyday ATH season!

On second thought, it's actually a pair of things.

Just wait till they want to use it for real transactions 

It isn't stupid to ask IMO.
Very briefly:
Tether, as per the FAQ pointed above, is a substitute for USD pegged 1:1.
It's being used to add fiat-like liquidity.
There are worries of over-creation of tether (fractional reserve), along with more complex hypotheses.
If it is a fake, and it pops, there will be some blood and unpleasant consequences on BTC price.
However, bitcoin has lived through worse events (Gox, for example). If one believes in the long-term future of bitcoin, tether shouldn't be able to sway their course of action for the long run.

TL;DR: Just hodl.

Double and triple crosses. You're just way above in Higher Conspiracy Studies, man.

That's why I've been wishing the audit to produce an "all clean" report.

If there's no fractional reserve going on, and tether is really backed up 1:1 by real USD, this means no actual printing privilege has been taken away from the central banks. In turn, this should imply the central banks can't take legitimate action against tether creation and, more importantly, have no need or little motivation to do so.

However, my whole point is moot. Apparently, the audit's been canned and it's likely there is overprinting (fractional reserve) going on, so the games are still quite open.

This could be an effective motive for the exchanges not to adopt LN.

Yet a number of exchanges or other online accounts still have a default fee of 0.0008 BTC for a standard 1in+2out tx, and users are not allowed to set it to a different value  

I think the two points made by AlexGR show how we'll really have to lobby the exchanges into servicing user needs. Much more competition is what we need.

The first cheering half-tit of a calf run?
The lady knows how to handle flow.
Merited as a micro push.
But you invite me to your next party okay?  

Hehe how do you figure? Channels still limited to 0.042 btc. However, it's a happy coincidence with the low transaction fees on the main chain making new channel creation fairly cheap.

Hm... one moment. Happy coincidence? There are no coincidences! (Looking warily over shoulder)
... and most aren't happy anyway. Wish a real conspiracy expert would chime in now.

Tera Beara, we don't give a ratt's ass.  

(Nothing personal. I couldn't resist.)

Well done. A few tens more or less... will it change your life? Don't think so.

I think your to-do list could possibly contain "learning to live it up" practice sessions?

I started thinking about retiring/changing pace drastically already, and you know what? I realized I like my life well enough, so I'd need to train myself to a new one, even if it's technically "better."

I'm pretty sure Coinbase's practices played a bigger role here than many of us (I, for one!) suspected. On the other hand, that would make it even easier for an adversary who is willing to, and large enough to swallow the backblow in lost mining revenue (like 1/n  for smallish n - say 3.5-5).

Playing the devil's advocate apprentice: it might have been a necessary, or merely favorable, condition to have big boss exchange playing along. But it's only a matter of how much you have to burn/how long it lasts.

Wild guessing exercise:

XRP, uh I don't know... probably not as many: only wise, up-to-date kids who already made some on korn? Mid-large positions maybe?

BTC on the contrary, quite a few people I think. Pops and moms, first-timers, people already on the brink for months-years. I imagine many small positions with no single mind, no coordination, basically no clue. Most on Coinbase.

No proof as in theorem, but lots of hard numerical evidence showing suspect correlation.
I suspect the operation was only economical with regionally subsidized energy back in China.
As soon as you become a smaller part of the earth mining pool, the cost of spamming grows like 1 - 1/n, if your hashrate is 1/n of the total.
I'd challenge a malicious opponent to pull this off in, say, Canada.

He does. And I think he will be all right very soon.
But I was slightly and nastily suggesting that Toxic might have a problem with the "some relaxation" issue while Bob's on horseback and his bf is away ;-)

Worried about cowboys chasing you?  

My thoughts exactly. It was my main crypto-hope recently that they could successfully withstand an audit. But I've always been skeptical about it. I am afraid bitfinex with its tether business and other malpratices is due to cause serious trouble soon.

4 PM Greenwich Time - I think it's CET-1, but do check.

You'll have to open at least 48 channels, since at the moment each channel has max 0.042 BTC capacity.

No. Each intermediate hop (channel fund movement) is confirmed almost instantaneously. So the sending node gets its balance back at once.