Bitcoin BTC Achilles heel.
What you know as Bitcoin today is not precisely Bitcoin; it is all but name at this point because those that control the social media narrative promote Bitcoin as a way to get rich and encourage that behavior. Long are the days when the description was that Bitcoin would become a worldwide currency without borders. Now it is all just about getting rich. Those that hold Bitcoin want to get rich. They think that if you use it today, you will lose the value appreciation over time. You are encouraged to keep holding so that later on, you can exchange it for more fiat in the future, the same fiat that the government is printing anyway.
Bitcoin not only has the problem of speculators speculating in future price speculation. But those who hold it believe you shouldn't sell it but wait for it to gain value against fiat currencies; those people don't care if you can't use it today as a currency. They don't care if a transaction fee is one penny or one thousand dollars. Some Bitcoin BTC supporters have publicly declared that they wish BTC transactions to be as expensive as possible so that the poor ignorant can't afford to spend their satoshis. As such, they think they are protecting the poor from themselves by preventing them from spending. When more educated people argue against that idea, their solution for cheap transactions is always Lightning Network, the solution for all Bitcoin's problems.
Lightning Network has the same issue: transaction fees because you need two transactions to have an LN channel, one to open the channel itself. The other transaction cost is a reserve, which is money you can't spend and is reserved so that you always have enough money to close the channel. If the cost on-chain goes up, the amount in reserve in your channel will also go up, to the point that it will eat the whole channel liquidity if the price is high enough and the channel is not big enough for the transaction fee. It is the Aquiles Heel of LN that you need to have enough satoshis to close the channel.
As I write this article, transactions on-chain are not higher than $0.25, but once transaction costs exceed $10, many small channels will become useless. Some will even become not even worthless because they will not even be worth the transaction cost to close the channel. But Bitcoiners already have a solution. It is called use custodians like the Wallet of Satoshi, or better yet, Chivo Wallet, a government sponsor bank account.
But in all seriousness, when BTC transaction costs go beyond $50, and LN channels become useless, Bitcoin Cash BCH may have a chance to shine and prove that one solution is to have more space on the blockchain. Still, until that moment, those that hold BCH must continue to encourage the usage of BCH as currency and not a get-rich scheme, and those who use it as a currency will promote the proper use of Bitcoin as it was meant to be, on-chain and without custodians.
Bitcoin Aquile's heel is the transaction cost and the fact that their community believes in holding just for speculation purposes. Ignoring everything else that in the future will be needed once central banks and government start to crack down on it and create draconian laws to deal with the threat that Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer currency is for the money printing machine and its operators.
I have written other articles about Lighting Network, and please feel free to read them.
My first NFT, JPG, is for sale for only one satoshi. Lightning Network custodian addresses.
Will users be forced to use custodians to use Bitcoin in the future?
You don't need custodians to use Bitcoin and Lightning Network. Bitcoin Cash is an alternative too.
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What's wrong with the Lightning Network wallets?
Custodians and their services are the future.
El Salvador's approach to Bitcoin is banking system 2.0
Bitcoin custodian services are a rehypothecation tool of the total supply by banks.
