[johnpaulkiser]

What do you mean by layer of trust? Bitcoin is definitely not "trustless" its trust minimized for sure. Lightning also minimizes trust in a very similar way. As a user you don't have to make any more assumptions when using lightning than you do already using the bitcoin base layer.

[nwah1]

With bitcoin you can send funds peer to peer. No trusted intermediaries. Routing through a network of exchanges is more like routing through SWIFT or ACH.

[itsdsmurrell]

For a large fee and with a lot of uncertainty on if it will make it into a block. Try the fork of Bitcoin that still operates like Bitcoin used to up until 2016: Bitcoin Cash.

[three_seagrass]

Bitcoin cash is just another alt coin at this point. Transactions have been dwindling and it hasn't even had a reason to flex it's larger block size yet (which is why it was created).

[itsdsmurrell]

Yes, it's a pity people are so easily manipulated.

[varajelle]

There are no trusted intermediary in lightning.

If an intermediary is not behaving, the worst that can happen is that your found are blocked for a small amount of time.

[nwah1]

https://themoneymongers.com/lightning-network-watchtowers/

[varajelle]

1) You don't need trust the watch tower, they can't steel your money. 2) you can host a watch tower yourself on your server.

[nwah1]

If a payment channel is still open, then the blockchain hasn't confirmed anything yet, the only speedup is to reduce roundtrips to the blockchain in the case of a series of transactions. So you are still limited by the speed of the blockchain, unless you decide to trust parties in the Lightning Network.

[nwah1]

Onion routing also requires trust that there is no collusion between nodes