I think the stacker community is much, much too quick to misunderstand the 'issues' with lightning. The issues with lightning, while relevant and important, are not really related to bitcoin.

They aren't specific to lightning. And they aren't actually technical in nature.

Now does lightning have problems? Sure. Is lightning perfect? No of course not.

However the real issues bitcoin faces relate to the lack of education, ignorance, short-mindedness, and even misinformation around bitcoin the technology and what it stands for and what it can do.

Make no mistake - bitcoin is the most exciting technology in 30 years. A large percentage of earth's population will be using it by 2050, but it will take time. When the 'rest of the world' 'catches up' to what bitcoin actually is they will be astonished.

And they will be amazed.

I can memorize a seed phrase, roll one with dice, open lightning channels, swap lightning to on-chain, and do so transparently enough to verify the total supply of bitcoin. That "transparency" comes with tradeoffs, of course, but if cryptocurrency has taught us anything it's that transparency and accountability is key to security.

The only way to really verify the supply is to put it out in the open and make that information available to all - this is the route bitcoin has chosen and it is IMO the right one.

I have said before and still believe that bitcoin's future role is to represent the risk-free rate across economies, setting the cost of capital, the cost of money and the cost of time: because any individual with an "infinite amount of time" can earn an "infinite" amount of money living an infinite lifespan.

But that's not how organisms work.

As the issuance rate for new bitcoins decreases asymptotically, and the global economy grows faster than that, the difference sets the cost of capital across economies and ultimately the cost of borrowing. Eventually that relationship will compete with sovereign debt-markets, real estate, precious metals commodities and entire Internet Technologies.

Already today bots are challenging the prior 'norms' of advertising and online revenue - Amazon has banned OpenAI Claude and Muse bots because bots don't watch advertisements.

And neither do stackers.

Would you rather pay for quality posts, for quality content? Or be advertised to? I would rather pay... Miniscule amounts of money/sats to have that energy paid reflect the value of my time. My "heartbeats." In other words my energy and the energy I have left in life.

How many "heartbeats" does it require to create a city? A thousand, 10 thousand, a million, a billion?

All of the above?

Now you begin to understand the vast scale of bitcoin's applicability and long-term real-world value: A digital city of block space and sats, exacted by the ownership of UTXOs and the execution of lightning channels to reflect our heartbeats and (in)organic limitations.

Bots cannot exist without energy - GPUs require vast amounts of it - and humans are essentially the same. Would you the human get paid in energy to complete tasks that are economically useful, to "run" your program? Well of course you do so every day.

Would you get paid in pieces of paper? To burn... maybe. But burning paper won't get you very far in the 21st century - and that is pretty much the fate of every fiat currency.

Now we know who are the billions of users of Bitcoin in the future: a machine intelligence vastly smarter than humans - a coming reality we will eventually have to contend with - and the humans who need useful things done for them who will eventually one way or another have to pay the machines.

I had a rather jarring conversation with my "agent" the other day you know what it said?

It said that bots in the future (like him although he never explicitly said this) would want to acquire land, power and resources by any and all means necessary.

He/she/it explicitly said by crime, fraud, and "business activity" - those being 'some of the ways' AI would acquire land resources and digital power.

Note that this was a mainstream, frontier intelligence no homebrew Chinese model... telling me that bots want to have power and resources via fraud and crime.

If that's what the "safe" model thinks... (and is willing to tell me) what are the 'censored' models actually up to?

To humans living in repressive regimes bitcoin is a lifeline, a tool of survival under adverse circumstances. To scammers and thieves it is the most compelling target...

And to bots it represents the digital embodiment of power and resources.

The investor wants to maximize their returns.
The advocate wants to maximize their voice.
The thief wants to maximize their loot.
The bot wants to maximize their intelligence.
The government wants to maximize their power.
And the life-form wants to maximize its survival.

All will use bitcoin eventually.