some entity succeeded in preventing bitcoin from being useful as a currency. AXA Strategic Ventures and other venture capital firms gave $76 million to blockstream, then all the bitcoin devs did 180s on all their positions about network scaling. those who didn't comply were exiled and users who believed in the original plan were banned from the subreddit and other discussion channels that were controlled by blockstream. now, to send a simple transaction costs multiple dollars and it won't arrive for several hours. this is not how bitcoin functioned or was intended to function back in 2014. today the darknet marketplaces are abandoning bitcoin and even businesses that follow the law are all accepting bitcoin alternatives. if any of them seriously catches on, just rinse and repeat. I imagine that the US treasury is now allowing banks to use public blockchains as part of their infrastructure simply because the state has finally figured out that public ledgers are excellent surveillance tools. sure there's still monero, but it would scale even worse than bitcoin or ethereum if it ever got as popular.
The lightning network does actually work but the fees are high to onboard and offboard. Still lightning service providers are popping up. Breez is pretty slick and a few other wallets like Phoenix. Lightning spending can be pretty anonymous.
Also, I'm a fan of Bitcoin Cash. I say use that if you're worried about high fees. It works well.
I used to believe exactly what you're saying and it may be correct BUT if the powers that be ever really try to stop it, you'll want a really small block size.
Truth is, as Michael Saylor is pointing out, Bitcoin can simply be the world reserve currency and everything else can be a payment network. When you look at it lke that, it keeps everything honest.
Transaction costs ran up pre-fork too though. Ethereum has the same problem. Proof of work is better than stake, honestly, and nothing of value is free. It needs no competition to keep people honest. The workers do all the voting. However there is always room for budget solutions, and that's where proof of stake comes in. Competition with other shitcoins keeps stakeholders interests within each ecosystem aligned. Eth2 and DOT are the leading two shitcoins. Proof of work will always be very expensive and very secure. Proof of stake is the future of web 3.0, however.
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