Most people have been txing with a trusted source (e.g. coinbase). > you could conceivably implement lightning with classical assets. Not with the same securi

Most people have been txing with a trusted source (e.g. coinbase). > you could conceivably implement lightning with classical assets. Not with the same security properties. The idea of building a money transfer service where you simply have many people with liquidity that transfer IOUs instead of the actual money has been around since at least the 8th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala There was no formal ultimate settlement layer though. I personally think that we need to continue to investigate ways to push what we trust and eventually have a workable system that actually trusts individual public keys to not double spend on pain of losing their reputation. Until that happens I'll continue to hold some BTC.