no point talking to lauda. he hates bitcoin
he has on many occassions hated services that allows real world retailers to use bitcoin. if lauda had his way he would want bitpay, coinbase and other merchant tools to burn in hell. he has been very audible with hating payment gateways.
its getting obvious lauda is too entranched in the blockstream band camp of moving everyone away from bitcoin.. he is just showing the the bait (segwit) before the switch(sidechains).
funny thing is that segwit will need to "bribe" people with a fee discount.. which in-of itsself is actually going to incentivise the spammers to be the first ones to move across and use it. rather than regular folk.(say goodbye to short term capacity growth thanks to the bribe)
what he is also not telling you is that segwit involves having to move funds into new types of addresses. which will pee alot of people off.. because some people will have to change everything they do, otherwise they are limited to who they can send funds to and who can send them funds..
segwit is not just a soft fork that is backward compatible.. that is an oversell.. of something that is becoming less and less SOFT as we get closer to seeing what it actually does
he thinks segwit is the solution.. yet once the 1.8x capacity (sideeffect) has happened.. segwit cannot grow any more.. then its back to the discussion of blocksize increase OR offchain.. and guess what he is full steam going to over promise and under factualize.. yep you guessed it.. "off-chain". instead of protecting bitcoins onchain usefulness.
he proclaims he wants bitcoin to be better then visa.. and what is his perfect solution.. LN.. something that "authorizes" payments near instantly. but the settling would be FAR FAR FAR FAR worse than visa.
and what is also not really talked about is people funds are locked into a multisig. meaning that the user cant just move his funds around without agreement from another person. if you cannot see that as steps towards corporate control then you are missing the big picture.
lauda has no coding knowledge never once have i seen him talk about LN in terms of multisig. he has only read the glossy images hand picked and presented to him in a narrative that makes him think pushing people offchain is a good thing. he has no clue.
lets not side track the 2018-2020 one way street.. lets instead just talk about the short term "drama"
segwit = 1.8x scaling (cant go further)
2mb HF = 2x scaling(possibly more with flexcap alllowing higher numbers without endless downloads)
segwit = if fullnodes want to remain fullnodes they need to upgrade
2mb HF = if fullnodes want to remain fullnodes they need to upgrade
segwit = if upgrade but enable pruned no witness mode, it dilutes the full distribution node count (could end up with 50% dilution+)
2mb HF = if dont upgrade it dilutes the full distribution node count (but it wont activate unless there is >90%, meaning only 10% max dilution)
segwit=once active, there is no "doubling segwit".. 1.8x is the max
2mb HF = once active you can always double it.. infact it can be made easy to achieve with flexicap/bu/user settings menu, without need to download upgrades each time.
as for the laughter of segwit beaing leaner, less bloating and not going to affect bandwidth limits of nodes..
segnet
https://segnet.smartbit.com.au/block/000000ddf050de21b895ff687102211806ef2322143c1bea2638490e696f6e56350 transactions totalling 1 input-one output............ you would think it would be a low 0.088mb block (at a 250byte average).. nope 2.8MB!!
https://segnet.smartbit.com.au/block/00000056a6d930e62f81108f43b490931c9722a324a71b7e959fd03fb6be0580655 transactions totalling one input-one output............ you would think it would be a low 0.164mb block (at a 250byte average).. nope 2.7MB!!
so all of the chest bumping over the last year that segwit slims down bloat.. and how the network cannot handle 2mb of real data.. have now evaportated
the only debate left lauda can fight is the requirement that everyone needs to upgrade.
and as i said, a HF wont come into action unless a majority upgraded.. and those running full nodes are usually those with more then just a passing interest in economics, so they want to remain full nodes, so will ofcourse have an interest in remaining full nodes and upgrade should the time come.
so lauda has run out of any rational, logical excuses..