It’s indistinguishable from cash app to the user. Except that it works internationally and very low fees. It’s better solution than cash app but with crypto (abstracted from the user).
I mean they don't even allow anyone else to connect to their lightning nodes.
[edit] oh I get it, they don't want to register as money transmitters haha, it's just to avoid regulation.
It’s using the Lightning Network to replace traditional interbank networks like Swift. Or ACH (at least for outgoing payments) If you don’t see this as a valuable thing, I’m sorry. It also allows arbitrary payments to lightning invoices denominated in USD, you can pay any user of the app, or any lightning invoices.
You don’t need to connect to lightning nodes - it is a network and if you need to route through them, it will.
Why bitcoin? Because they don’t need to maintain a liquidity pools and use swift to balance the USD pools. They can use cheap LN payments to instead of swift for settlement. Note that LN is unfairly cheap to use. An order cheaper than swift.
As an asset, at some point, all the money that will go into it will go into it, and it won't grow anymore, the get-rich-quick game will be over, and people will start to sell, and the price will crater. This can even by triggered by the $30 billion dollars in new money required to pay miners each year.
LN is perfect because unless you squint it's a plausible attempt to solve some of the limitations of the underlying asset.
But here in reality, opening and closing a single LN channel for everyone on earth would take over 150 years. It would cost 1/3 of a trillion dollars in transaction fees. If you broadcast an old wallet state you'll lose your coins. If any intermediate node goes down, it'll lock up your funds. It suffers from terrible illiquidity.
The same number of channels now as 3 years ago. Usage is not growing. It's not a viable solution. It is, however, great distraction.
Just 18 more months!