[cornholio]

"Bitcoin is breaking up" = Buy like a madman. The blocksize cuts down on the transaction spam making transactions non-free, maybe a few cents each. This is not optimal and certainly needs to fix in the next few years, because it harms microtransactions.

But "breaking up" ? That's just sensationalist bullshit. That's like saying Netflix is on the edge of bankruptcy because it's raging success has temporarily killed HD streaming in Australia & Antarctica. As a community building exercise, this debacle is great for Bitcoin, it really shows no one is in control and consensus to change the rules of the game is very hard to reach.

[woah]

The fact that every transaction ever is saved for ever harms microtransactions. Luckily nobody actually uses Bitcoin, especially not for microtransactions. The network can't handle more than 3 transactions a second, and luckily it doesn't have that volume. Lightning is the only thing that can actually make Bitcoin more performant than a small VPS with postgres, if it is something that people want.

Also, "Lightning-like" channels aren't unique to Bitcoin- they can be implemented on Turing-complete currencies, and even on bank servers[1]

1. http://altheamesh.com/blog/universal-payment-channels/