[keymone]

> If that is true, doesn't that put too much power in Alice's hand? And if there are some nodes which have heavily invested in cpu/io and coins to their channels, wont they effectively control a large part of the transaction volume and hence make the network more decentralized?

what do you mean by "power"? yes, there will be nodes handling more transactions than other nodes, but that in no way prevents you from using other nodes or even investing into opening channels yourself and competing.

> those cards are loaded automatically when I get my salary/income. And the money is not tied, I can move it around as much as I want.

not everybody carries a debit card connected to their main bank account. and those that do usually have daily limits on how much they can spend, so you can't really move it around as much as you want. similar to that, not every BTC holder stores their BTC in hot wallet. funding your debit card is similar to funding your hot wallet which is similar to funding your LN channels.

don't take the analogy too far though. point is that LN allows you to do is micropayments without flooding the blockchain. there are tradeoffs involved. that's it.