I bought my first 0.1 BTC before 2015, and I left it in Coinbase; for some reason, I forgot my 2FA, and I couldn't withdraw when the market was at the top in 2017, so Coinbase gave me access to my old wallet months later. I was able to get my funds after some long customer support tickets, but in those days, I ended up cashing out around $1300, and my account with Coinbase was closed, and until now, I have not been able to open another account with them again.
I remember using Bitcoin before 2015 and, transactions were cheap; it felt like the future in those days. When I moved my 0.12 out of Coinbase, I had to pay around 0.0001, which was rather odd to me. I started researching what had changed since the first time used and tested Bitcoin and realized the block size dilemma. I started posting on community forums, trying to find out what the issue was. I would get a ban just for asking questions in the Bitcoin forums.
You would get terrible propaganda about altcoins on Bitcoin forums. I decided to start researching what I could find about the block size wars because I knew the issues with Bitcoin by that time. In the end, I decided to reinvest my initial money and try new coins, and I ended up buying and selling many of them in some I lost in some I gained.
I was buying and selling, but also at the same time, I was trying them, testing them, and reading what the mission of each project was. I ended up using Decred, Monero, Z-cash, XRP, Litecoin, Dogecoin, BitcoinZ, Ethereum, X-Cash, Cardano, Waves, BNB, and others that I can't remember.
I end up at the end of 2019 with 0.5 BTC. Even when I bought those coins, I never felt like holding them long-term because when I did my research, I found many issues with them, so I just tried to buy low sell high. Still, I knew something was up because I had to pay high transactions fees on each of those trades, and even when I have accumulated much more BTC, I never felt like I was doing something right.
The opportunity to leave for a new city came to me, and I decided to sell all of my cryptos for dollars to pay for my financial needs in the new town. It was a great choice because where I am now is much cheaper, and I also saved up some cash, which was a great decision because covid19 came and I lost my old job, and it has been problematic since that time. I hope to get a better job with higher pay in this new town.
Because I saved up fiat and moved from the city, even without a job I made through 2020, I think I had it best more than most people. But now, my initial 0.1 is gone, and I have used up all of my funds from my previous trades. At this point, I have realized why BTC fees are so high and the mission of Bitcoin Cash, so I decided to do some tests on LN because they say that's their solution for high transaction fees. Oh, boy, what a surprise LN is.
Well, opening and closing channels mean you have to pay those high fees plus routing fees. I played with private channels, open channels, and custodian wallets. And I have realized that prices are $10 on-chain that means you need to have at least $30, plus more money for your channel to have liquidity; when opening channels, you can choose to pay low fees and wait a long time.
Once your channel is open and you want to close it, the closing transaction will always be as high as the current priority fee because that's the way the protocol works. Even if you don't close the channel, your funds will be unusable and reserved, so current fees are $10, around $20 will be put into reserve fee, so if your channel is open with a $100 liquidity, $20 won't be spendable.
If you route payments in the same node, fees will be free or between 1 to 100 satoshis, but fees won't be cheap if you move funds from your channel through many other nodes. I created many channels and tested LN to understand it, and I understood that fees would never be cheap no matter the chain LN or SegWit.
One time I moved to 0.0153, and I had to pay around 0.00006 BTC. I had to make many transactions like that. The Bitcoiners don't want you to move your coins or use them because, just like me, you will realize that Bitcoin fees will never come down or that payments will never be cheap as long as BTC uses 1MB blocks.
I have also realized that as on-chain fees go up, so do LN routing fees as well. One of the big channel routing operators (LNBig) published that he only made $20 out of $1m in the lightning network as fees. Operators are risking their funds to provide liquidity for LN.
Opening and closing channels will get more expensive over time. Eventually, node operators will have to raise the routing fess to get some returns out of their locked liquidity. To realize this, it took me to open and close channels. In short, I had to use LN, and you don't have to do the same.
Just realize that Bitcoin was supposed to be a peer-to-peer currency, but with high fees, you can't be that, and LN will not help you either because you have to pay and reserve the funds to pay the opening and closing of channels.
Node operators provide liquidity. They are also paying high fees for opening their channels too. Eventually, both networks will be equally expensive. The only difference is that one will be costly and slow, the other will be much faster, but it will also be more expensive. I predict that Bitcoin Core holders will justify LN high fees by saying that it is costly because you are paying a premium for fast transactions at a much higher rate than three transactions for a minute.
In 2021, after realizing all of the altcoins shortcomings that I have tried before, some of them are; XRP you have to buy from a company, they make the money you hold a token, banks will never use XRP banks will use what the governments say. Litecoin is just a test network for Bitcoin, with a founder that just sold. Ethereum people say they are DeFi, so having everything in one coin makes it easier for a hostile agent to take over. After all, one currency as the whole DeFi is better than all altcoins having many DeFi chains. Z-cash, I'm not too fond of the idea of a tax for developers; Monero, I wonder if they don't have an inflation bug.
At the end of my analysis and previous experience using Bitcoin before 2015 and after 2017, I realized that Bitcoin Cash worked just like Bitcoin before the block size war. It is a threat for bitcoiners, which is why they attack it so harshly. The recent forks are just different views where both camps couldn't reconcile, and I think Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Cash ABC will have room in the altcoin market, but because of low fees and not crazy size blocks.
At 32MB for block and current hardware and internet connections, the Bitcoin Cash network can take more users. Prices for hardware on the retail side dictate that 128MB blocks could be the next stop. Remember, it is not just about increasing the block size. You will also need to find a balance between block size, prices for hardware so that the network doesn't become centralized.
Today, you can find a 100TB SSD for around $5k to $10k in price, and a 1GB internet connection costs $250. At 32MB for block, an ordinary desktop computer with a 100mbps internet connection can run a full node for ten years with a 16TB hard drive. At 128MB blocks, you will be pushing the regular house computer to the limit, but currently and at least for the next five years, we may not need giant blocks for a while.
So don't let anyone scared you into selling your Bitcoin Cash with the node centralization lie because you have a clear idea of how much a desktop computer costs, and you can run a full node for at least ten years with just a couple of dollars more if you need a higher HDD.
I would say that 2021 will be the year when the usage of Bitcoin Cash will grow, and so will the price eventually. SimpleLedger, memo.cash, and many other services that let you write in the blockchain will bring more users, not to mention that finally, people will find out the lies about Bitcoin.
Just like I figured out that transactions have been kept high by design in BTC, many others will also search for solutions and cheaper transaction fees, just like I did. Help me spread my story so that maybe others can learn from my experience and may end up buying Bitcoin Cash just like me before it's too late.
I started my whole crypto journey just before 2015 with just 0.10 BTC. I hope others can learn from my experience and gain even more Bitcoin Cash to get into the train to get more for their money. Today everyone can get 100 times more Bitcoin Cash than Bitcoin in terms of satoshis, but the more users realize the lies about 1MB blocks, those satoshis will be much less and less.
