Even in a steel man argument I think someone would have to concede that BTC itself can not be the base layer most people, with a layer 2 like Lightning being ne

Even in a steel man argument I think someone would have to concede that BTC itself can not be the base layer most people, with a layer 2 like Lightning being necessary for scale which has it's own problems. Unfortunately as you say it is hard to tell how much genuine usage there is. The only thing I would add is that while crypto is worse, I feel the same concern regarding misaligned incentives in regular finance. In terms of address count, they're also as I understand intended to be use once[1]. On the other hand there's many people using the same wallet and transacting without ever leaving a exchange and causing a real transaction, though I probably wouldn't consider that as "counting" personally. [1]https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address_reuse