1. Context

I'm driven by technology, plain and simple. And when I was a teenager, during a class related to the Windows operating system, the teacher introduced us to the Notepad++ text editor where we could create our first "hello world" in HTML. This is a tradition among developers where the first thing to do in a new programming language is to write the most basic program, which is simply "hello world" on the screen.

At the time I liked it but wasn't very interested because I was more into hardware, GPUs and games. As time went on, I started to enjoy importing mods into some games, where you edited the game files to give items or models a different appearance.

2. How I discovered Bitcoin and crypto

That's when I became more interested in software and started visiting forums more related to the software side, and later had my first contact with Bitcoin. At first my reaction was like "nah, I don't even like finance... I don't even have money", and then I saw more and more people falling for Bitcoin-related scams. That put me off for a while, but sometime in 2015 or 2016 I read about Bitcoin and saw that it was something unique where people could transfer value through a decentralized network of computers, without depending on a central authority.

I didn't quite understand what that meant, but I saw its price rising and rising until a year later, in 2017, when BTC was costing R$8,000 REAIS (brazilian real) (approx. US$1,800.00 at the time), I asked my father if we could buy some because the price was rising so much, but he said no, that it was already too expensive. After that, I remained uninterested until around 2021 when BTC peaked and entered a very long bear market. I was in my second year of undergraduate studies in software engineering, and that desire to learn more about cryptocurrencies returned in full force because I linked it to the devaluation of fiat money and everything else related with the current monetary system.

3. So why not choose Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is nearly perfect in its Layer-1 form; it's a decentralized digital currency with key qualities such as:

Programmed scarcity: Limited to 21 million units.
Decentralization: No government or central bank control.
High security: Via blockchain technology.

Its transactions are global, and immutable, functioning as a store and exchange of value. Bitcoin's supply is generated by energy, scarcity is controlled by halvings and algorithms that are fair through proof-of-work, and all of this is publicly recorded on the blockchain so anyone can verify.
So why not choose that? Well, it would have been impossible for someone or a group of people to create perfect crypto software at that time so Bitcoin has its flaws, mainly scalability of transactions per second and the speed of payment completion. Currently, Bitcoin's Layer 1 supports an average of 7 to 14 transactions per second, limited by factors such as Block Time (~10 min) and Block Size (~1MB).

This has practical implications, such as:

Confirmation and Finality: A transaction takes about 10 minutes to receive the first confirmation. For high-value transactions, the security standard is to wait for 6 confirmations (1 hour).
Fee Market: As block space is scarce (limited to about 2,000–3,000 transactions per block), users compete by paying higher fees so that miners prioritize their submissions during periods of high demand.
Layered Scalability: Due to these limitations in L1, Bitcoin scales to mass use through Layer-2 (L2), such as the Lightning Network.

4. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link: The L2 Lightning Network as a weak link

The Lightning Network (LN) is often criticized for introducing elements of centralization that do not exist in Bitcoin's Layer 1 (L1) due to its network structure and economic incentives. Unlike Bitcoin Layer-1, where centralization focuses on mining power, in LN it manifests in liquidity and infrastructure.

For payments to flow efficiently, the model tends to organize itself around large hubs because it is easier and cheaper to route a payment through a single large, well-connected node than through several small nodes.

Unlike the Layer-1, where you only need Bitcoin to transact, in the LN you need liquidity. Opening and maintaining channels with high capital volume requires a lot of locked-up Bitcoin. This favors large institutions (exchanges and payment processors) that have abundant capital to become the main liquidity providers.

5. If not Bitcoin, then who will it be?

This might be a tough question, and for me it seemed to have no answer until mid-2023 when I came across eCash - a Bitcoin fork - among other low market cap coins on Binance, and now I see that this is the answer to the question of a scalable Bitcoin. For me, this is the real electronic cash Satoshi envisioned for the internet.

My Crypto Origin Story: I am driven by technology.

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