The whole reason we have currency is to allow transactions between people that don't trust each other, so I don't think Lightning network will do anything significant
1. With the caveat that you (or a service you delegate) need to be prepared to broadcast a transaction within some time period if a peer tries to defraud you, which is unlikely since if they fail they lose their funds in the channel.
2. Assuming enough liquidity in the network
Lighting network is also distributed, you don't need a direct channel between you and another party to pay them. You just have to find a route.
Who cares? Honestly, who cares if BTC is the one that wins? I only care about some cryptocurrency seeing mass adoption, I don't care if that's BTC or any of the other thousand coins.
I think a bigger risk than specifically Bitcoin failing is all this crypto fragmentation. If not Bitcoin, then what?
When Yahoo was replaced by Google people switched and their lives didn’t change.
If/when Bitcoin goes to zero people could lose faith in crypto completely there might never be a replacement.
If currencies go to zero and the masses lose their money then they could lose faith in the whole system. Interop of 100+ currencies won’t matter if all have zero value.
I’m not saying this will happen, but suggesting it’s a worst case scenario.
Well, everyone who is long on BTC.
Is it not obvious to you that no fees is a ridiculous proposition? Free transactions mean spam and that doesn't work in a distributed ledger.
It has a good chance of working, in my opinion (the lightning network), if they don't dawdle too long. But the clock is ticking.