Earlier quoted context omitted.
> which to me says that it's becoming the settlement layer as expected To me it says that only rich whales get to transact in bitcoin. Pretty sad that now regular people get excluded from something that was conceived as p2p internet cash.
Not really, it just means big centralized companies are settling their end-users funds on the blockchain while providing them access to it practically free. Regular people right now use it through Paypal, Cash app, Venmo, Coinbase, etc. And soon enough channel factories should make it possible to create multiple lightning channels at once, so an end-user will never pay the whole channel opening fee by themselves. As…
I'm not American, but as far as I know you can't withdraw bitcoin from paypal, cash app or venmo.