The claim is not that Blockstream intended to profit from Lightning. Rather they used the promise of Lightning to throttle Bitcoin, in order to profit from Liquid.
Nonsense. Liquid is directly dependent on Bitcoin's success.
And as has been stated before, Blockstream employees got a chunk of their pay check in bitcoin. Do you really think they'd try to "throttle" their own livelihood?
Okay, how are they profiting from liquid? Moreover, what's liquid's "moat"? What's stopping me from copying liquid's software (seems to be open source) and making a clone that charges 0% fees?
And as has been stated before, Blockstream employees got a chunk of their pay check in bitcoin. Do you really think they'd try to "throttle" their own livelihood?