Could Litecoin fill the gap? BTC fees, Lightning Network, and the need for a solid crypto asset for both spending and saving.

This post is born out of a few issues:

- high network fees for BTC make it necessary to time and frugalize (did I just coin that term?) transactions.

- LN is a great solution for payments, but trx fees still apply when you go back on-chain or charge your wallet. In the future, I great that this may become untenable for small players.

- I want to use something with good tokenomics, reasonable fees, and reasonable speed for cross border transactions. No CBDCs or other inflationary coins. I also want to be able to save it without losing money to inflation. I'm ok with market flux.

Basically, I want to use BTC for payments, but I see this as increasingly less tenable and as such see LTC as the next best thing, rather than BTC + LN. I'm not emotionally attached to this solution, though, so feel free to educate me. First, let me elaborate a bit:

Litecoin has many of the benefits of Bitcoin: it's decentralized, POW, its network is secure, it's non-inflationary, and there is no founder who will dump a bunch of pre-mined coins on the market (anymore... At least it won't happen again...), nor is there any foundation that can reward itself by inflating the supply at whim.

This is what sets it (LTC) apart from most altcoins:

-As mentioned above, no inflating the coin supply or rugpulling by founders.

-POW, and not POS. POW means that there is actual work (energy / electricity) backing the value of the asset, rather than POS, which results in a somewhat dubious evaluation scheme where it's worth something because people say it is. I understand that this issue is more complex, but POW, economically speaking, is an advantage. At the very least, it's what I want in the payment tool I'm seeking.

-It's still very quick and cheap to send.

Bitcoin is a great store of value, and I like the lightning network, and use it myself.

The issue is, however, that bitcoin fees are increasing significantly, and if the network continues to grow, trx fees may cut out the little guy - or at least that's my fear. It's already at the point where a trx costs $20 or so. And ordinals, and the network will grow from here. So, even if you use the lightning network for sending and receiving bitcoin, you still pay, for example, $20 per month if / when you need to cash out your transactions back to an on-chain bitcoin wallet.

Again, my fear is that in the future, as bitcoin remains a store of value and gains even more traction, a trx that costs 45,000 sats (~$20) today may cost even more. And even if not, 45,000 sats, if bitcoin is $450,000, ends up being about $200. For institutions, this is a great deal, and a bargain for moving millions of dollars at whim with final settlement in a few hours. For those who want to move some pocket change to a lightning wallet for daily use, paying $200 is completely untenable.

Part of my attraction to crypto is the actual use of it. I sell things to people all over the world, and transaction fees eat into my income significantly. I prefer to transact using a medium that's not inflationary (so I can save it if I want to and it doesn't plummet in value like USD does). To me, litecoin is the best tool for this, at least in my current understanding. I can send it for fractions of pennies, and I don't need to worry about moving it on-chain from LN and incurring a huge loss from the fees every time.

Correct me if I'm wrong: I think that as BTC gains traction, I think it will become even more of a store-of-value-only asset, which is great. I don't see LN being viable if trx fees keep going up, which means that its utility as a payment vehicle goes down.

However, when making payments, I still want something that maintains the philosophy of bitcoin as closely as possible. No inflationary shitcoins, no centrally controlled CBDCs, no POS coins.

The only other options I see:

-ERG? Maybe once it gets bigger.

-BCH? Umm... Maybe? r/btc kind of left a bar taste in my mouth.

-BSV? Chris Wright, doesn't that wonderful innovator have something to do with this? Somehow I still prefer litecoin.

-Others? I'm happy to listen.

Conclusion: I think litecoin is more viable than LN+BTC as a bitcoin-like, inexpensive payment method for everyday use, while still giving benefits to those who save it long-term. Maybe the gains won't match those of bitcoin or other altcoins, but it will perform better than fiat toiletpaper.

An I missing something? I kind of feel like Litecoin is more of a treasure that it gets credit for, if you can get over the founder's ungraceful exit - but now it's founderless and free.