> what is the point of adopting BTC if vast majority of the transactions are going to be handled by a third party service

Because they've saturated the technical audience who can do bitcoin without a 3rd party service and now need regular people to shovel money in to keep the prices propped up.

This is the "please buy a single tube of toothpaste from my Quixtar stash" phase.

All consumer banks are 3rd parties, they just share a common protocol, the federal reserve.

In El Salvador you could use any wallet you want, it doesn't have to be Strike, so it's the same thing.

But actually it's not the same thing, because you could even use your own wallet software and still be interoperable.

The point of adopting BTC is generally to get wealthier. Merchants accept BTC to have more customers, more revenue and ultimately more profit. As I have witnessed it, there has been increasing adoption of BTC slowly but surely. In El Salvador however now they have to accept BTC because the government mandates that. Whether that makes sense or not, I don't know, but it is happening in any case.

Strike is just one player in the lightning space, there are many other alternatives [1] (Phoenix is an easy to use non-custodial one).

1: https://lightningnetworkstores.com/wallets

There is open market competition for these third-parties. The system is fully trustless. Furthermore, onion routing (akin to Tor) is in development to prevent that third-party from knowing the content of your transaction and who you transacted with.

> There is open market competition for these third-parties.

Like banks?

> The system is fully trustless

Except for those third-parties, you mean? The people running the Lightning network are essential to this system functioning and very, very few people won’t be fully reliant on a bank to store their Bitcoin — especially after the first time someone makes the news for losing their wallet.

> Except for those third-parties, you mean?

The third-party can't steal your Bitcoins. Assuming your node is online 24/7, you can verifiably cash out your Bitcoin on the blockchain at any time.

The third-party doesn't hold your Bitcoin– both parties can close the channel and cash out, again without any trust.

Your Bitcoins can't be stolen by a third-party, unless you and your watchtower fail to broadcast a transaction with proof there was a channel transfer.

I read watchtowers are used to keep third-parties honest when nodes aren't online 24/7. https://blog.bitmex.com/lightning-network-part-4-all-adopt-t... They don't hold your keys.

That sounds like a lot of infrastructure which you need to operate to avoid trusting your back. Do we have any reason to think the average Salvadoran wants to do that? If not, it’s not exactly realizing the sales pitch.

Watchtowers are third-parties that allow your node to go offline.

Bitcoin has lax liveness requirements unlike other networks. cough cough Ethereum 2.0 PoS

Because it's a global currency not reliant on the US dollar? Not everything is about perfect decentralisation too, third parties can run decentralised infrastructure so it's verifiable by users of the network.

With USD (and indeed any national currency), generally all functions except issuance are handled by third party services, that would be the status quo for a currency, wouldn't it?

Sure, but is Bitcoin trying to improve that status quo or replicate it? Am I supposed to be impressed that Bitcoin has built a system that is also reliant on third-party services, just like modern banking?

For the moment, starting up a lightning provider is simpler than starting up a payment processor, but how much of that is because of regulation? And do we have any evidence that in the future lightning providers won't be as regulated as modern payment providers? Why should I assume that in the future the situation with lightning providers is going to be any different than the current situation with PayPal?

Getting off the federal reserve petrodollar inflation express.

Bitcoin (and lightning) give you the option to self-host as much as you want. They don’t force you to do anything.

One advantage is that you're creating a separation of concerns, so that it would be easy to change third parties if necessary.

"Why even have friends when I need to have a bunch of them? Makes no sense to me"