[amluto]

I think that the end game of Lightning is very bad. Imagine that Bitcoin remains relevant and continues to have huge market cap for several years and that Lightning takes off to the point that most transactions use Lightning and the cost of an actual on-chain transaction drops to a few tens of cents. The reward for mining a block will drop significantly (as originally planned in the Bitcoin design), and the transaction fees per block will also drop significantly.

On the flip side, with Lightning, it's possible to steal quite a lot of money if you have the ability to prevent transactions from being mined (i.e. if you can mount a 51% attack). In particular, you can prevent any penalty transactions against yourself from ever showing up on the blockchain.

In other words, Lightning will drive the profit available from 51% attacks up and will drive the profit available from honest mining down. What happens when they cross over?

[JumpCrisscross]

> the cost of an actual on-chain transaction drops to a few tens of cents

"In 2014, the volume-based transaction fees [for Fedwires] range from 2.8 cents to 69 cents per transfer" [1]. They charge an extra 15¢ if the quantity is over $10 million and another 36¢ if over $100 million. These transactions settle instantly and almost every bank gives consumers access to them (albeit with varying surcharges).

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/paymentsystems/fedfunds_corep...