"Most transactions cancel out at the account level. The binks demand bitcoins of each other only because they don't want to hold account money for too long. So a relatively small amount of bitcoins infrequently transacted can support a somewhat larger amount of account money frequently transacted."

https://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/th...

> satoshi expressed in his emails that he was under the impression that bitcoin would scale on its own in the early days

And it did. I don't think today still classifies as "early". See above for people already thinking far ahead for longterm solutions to scaling.

There is no way Tx of average humans would significantly cancel out within the time of a block. Thats why LN just makes the time to settlement "infinite" and that's why it partially increases centralization again to cancel out more Tx. If that was the goal it could have been implemented in layer 1.

Anyway all that aside, lets just assume LN would work as perfectly as the devs hope it will do one day. Its sill way worse than existing FBA solutions that can handle most of this on layer 1 directly and already have fully working second layer (payment channels) implemented. Even if bitcoin and LN could eventually provide a similar good solution, whats the point if it already exists and why would anyone assume the existing solutions stop evolving while bitcoin and LN slowly catches up? If we assume LN has reached all its goals in 10 years it also means the goals are outdated by 10 years.

We can arguing about what LN may be capable of doing one day but its never gonna be a valid argument against solution that deliver today.

So, while Satoshi’s opinion isnt really relevant to bitcoin’s future, since you brought it up, Satoshi clearly didn't think layer one was the inly way yo go.