[pepesza]

Bitcoin the network is fully transparent, which makes BTC not really fungible - it can and is traced, which creates better/worse BTC. This is why coinbase (small c) BTC is sold at premium.

Bitcoin should and will die, but in its place a thousand flowers will bloom.

FYI, you can have BTC asset without Bitcoin network in trust-less manner TODAY. See recent paper by Leona Hioki on the way to do it using Witness Encryption cryptographic scheme.

[tenuousemphasis]

Lightning solves both scalability and privacy of the base layer of bitcoin.