Many of the same nutjobs promoting BTC also Promote LN, not realizing it may use altcoins to dethrone BTC
How is LN using altcoins to dethrone BTC? Sure. Altcoins can definitely use LN's tech. But does it matter? Does it make it an inferior solution just because it's not bitcoin-only? That doesn't make any sense at all.
To get you up to speed on recent events, the two most vocal critics of Lightning on this forum are
franky1 and Khaos77 (who likes to pretend they aren't
Zin-Zang, who said they were
never going to post again within 2 days of the
Khaos77 account being registered and appears to share all of the same obnoxious mannerisms, so make of that what you will).
They have this theory that because LN will facilitate Atomic Swaps, where you can effectively move funds between the different blockchains Lightning can be used with (namely Litecoin and Vertcoin at the moment), that this means people will use Lightning to leave Bitcoin in favour of other coins with lower fees. They like calling it the "thunderdome" from the Mad Max films. "
Two men enter, one man leaves". Dramatic stuff, right?
The reason this is a poor argument to make is that people can already use exchanges to leave Bitcoin and buy other coins with those attributes. The reason those other coins tend to have lower fees is because there isn't as much competition on those networks to include transactions in a block. If more people started using those other chains and blocks started to fill up, users might start offering larger fees to increase the chance of their transaction being included promptly.
Moreover, while they do everything they can to convince people that Lightning is the worst thing that could possibly happen, they also seem to argue that LN usage would have to
increase for their scary campfire tales to come true. Lightning usage is still comparatively low on the other blockchains which currently support it. If Atomic Swaps were commonplace right now, Litecoin and Vertcoin currently lack the capacity for any large number of users to leave Bitcoin via the Lightning network. Bitcoin currently has a
BTC network capacity on Lightning of over 1000 BTC. Litecoin, by comparison, only has just under 200
LTC network capacity on Lightning. At current market rates, 200 LTC is worth about 3 BTC. That means out of the ~1000 BTC capacity, only ~3 BTC could be currently used in atomic swaps.
Another point to consider is that when you use Atomic Swaps to move funds from one blockchain to another, it's a
swap. There has to be someone on the other blockchain wanting to move their funds to the blockchain you are on. If you atomic swapped your BTC for LTC, they have to swap their LTC for your BTC in return. So unlike the thunderdome, it's actually "
two users enter, then both users leave again", but you can see why they wouldn't describe it accurately, since it doesn't sound quite as foreboding or scary that way.
TLDR version: Once you understand how it all works, their "
concerns" (all sarcasm intended) are nothing more than fearmongering. There's a strong likelihood they are trolling the forums and you should judge the quality of their arguments very carefully.