>First, no where I mentioned current market cap, let alone its link to utility The only substantive way to read "this was what gave Bitcoin its utility, and th

>First, no where I mentioned current market cap, let alone its link to utility The only substantive way to read "this was what gave Bitcoin its utility, and thus value" is through its connection to market cap. >other crypto currencies have implemented LN and are beginning to use it No one is near having a functional lightning network. Simply enabling segwit isn't enough. Furthermore, it isn't enough to just have the LN, but it needs to be in widespread usage for its full potential to be reached. Say some low usage alt-coin did enable a fully functional lightning network. It wouldn't matter because there are no scaling concerns for that coin to begin with. It would be functionally no different than doing a transaction with the bare network. The LN is a solution to the kinds of scaling problems only bitcoin is currently having (perhaps Ethereum as well). >Aside from the fact that it would only give BTC 1.7x transaction counts boost LN enables off-chain transactions and so would scale the effective transaction capacity orders of magnitude.