Some very good points there. Layer 2 solutions on Monero should be interesting. However, for much of it you're also still comparing how things are now, and not paying too much mind to how they will develop. Lightning is very likely to become cheaper since the Bitcoin protocol consensus is most likely going to incorporate the CTV operation, which enables lightning to scale better. Existing implementations of Lightning are still in beta and will get better with development, and become more easy to spin up and to automate. Running a self sovereign lightning node even in this stage of development is quite easy for power users to do, and LSPs are plentiful and any one person can become one, so it's not a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination. I'm uncertain how Monero scaling will work along with hardware and bandwidth constraints: these still have to be limited, I think, either to a specific maximum or average rate, or to some other kind of constraint specified and enforced by the noderunners. Bitcoin has this in simple form as a fixed number of weight units. You may think bitcoin is bleeding value through transaction fees vs the alternative of bleeding very little value from low transaction fees, but this ignores the fact that holders of monero are paying _all the time_ for security of the network, via mild dilution of their holdings. It's a tradeoff. It's just a question of how do you want to pay for mining: mostly just transaction fees vs constantly while holding. You're paying for those tail emissions whether you think you are or not, unless you only use Monero as short term cash. I'm not implying that that's the only thing it's good for, but I am saying that that's the only way to avoid paying a nontrivial amount for security on it. Arguably a non-transparent cash NEEDS tail emissions in the long run, in order to diminish the value of long term holdings that no one can audit, in case of someone who held on forever in the shadows gaining too much influence and destabilizing the price. Bitcoin makes more of that info of who holds what and who probably lost their coins public, which allows us to point to why sudden price volatility might be happening when old whales start exerting influence.