For now, I'm a proponent of onchain scaling.

Onchain scaling, you say? Well, yes. Onchain scaling will mean that for usage by the whole global population we'd need multi-gigabyte block sizes to store all the transaction data.

And multi-gigabyte block sizes would be a very cumbersome thing unless internet speeds and storage capacities greatly improve. So why would I support onchain scaling?

That's simple. I just want to see layer 2 working in the wild before we start banking upon it.

You see, if I'd read Nakamoto's whitepaper in 2008, I'd have been skeptical too. "Sounds interesting", I might say. "Let's see it works in the wild".

And then it did. Nakamoto et al built the Bitcoin network, and I became a fan of blockchain. So when I hear Elizabeth Stark or Adam Back or Luke Dashjr talk about how wonderful they think LN could be in the future, I say: build it. Show me how great it is.

But to let the network degrade in the manner that Blockstream has—where median fees got to over $40 in December—because they believe that offchain scaling is necessary?

Well, that's absolutely sickening. Blockchain works as a decentralized low-fee electronic cash system. We know it works. I've read the lightning network whitepaper, and they envisage global usage of Bitcoin with lightning network. But they calculated that 133MB blocks will be necessary for that to happen, at current global population. Again, I'm open minded when it comes to second layer, because I don't want to end up in a situation with multi-gigabyte blocks. But if 133MB blocks will be necessary for global usage even with lightning, why in the hell aren't they willing to raise the blocksize from a paltry 1MB to 8MB like Bitcoin Cash?

I'll tell you why. It's because Blockstream don't want onchain to work at all for anything but big transactions, to incentivize use of layer 2.

And that's extremely frustrating for me, because right now we are still at the stage where onchain is fine. Bitcoin Cash raised the blocksize, and the fees dropped off a cliff.

Lightning network is an interesting idea, but there are so many things that could go wrong. The protocol in practice could turn out to be highly centralized, and expensive to access. It could turn out to have unforeseen security holes, or severe unreliability problems. That's why building tech in the real world is necessary before we even dream of becoming reliant on it. We have absolutely no idea how well or badly lightning will work in the wild given the problems that have occurred in the limited testnet trials thus far.

So, I hope lightning network (and similar things) are built. In the long run, I think we probably need something like this in order to scale to a global level. In the short run, we cannot neglect what works, which is blockchain. Bitcoin Cash, for me, is the real Bitcoin, because their devs are going for the low-hanging fruit of raising blocksize to keep the network functioning effectively, instead of banking on exotic second layer solutions which don't even functionally exist yet.

I want Bitcoin to be reliable, and useable, and $5, $10, $20, $40 transaction fees in order to incentivize people to migrate to the lightning network is an absolute ripoff. If the fees are anything like that, people are going to sell their BTC and buy BCH or ETH (or another altcoin) instead of waiting for a lightning network that may or may not ever function properly.