Your argument to all of the problems affecting bitcoin is...don't use bitcoin. Use this other thing, lightning, which is sort of built on bitcoin, but not really. And also not actually used anywhere, yet, even though it's supposed to be so amazing at fixing bitcoin's problems that crypto merchants should have embraced it over night.
That bitcoin's biggest proponents still haven't embraced lightning is a pretty clear admission of defeat by bitcoin apologists that bitcoin doesn't actually solve anything, and isn't actually very useful for anything, even with the fix that was supposed to finally bring bitcoin into the promised land.
Every lightning transaction (or channel update) is a valid Bitcoin transaction that can be broadcasted to the Bitcoin network and settled at any time. Lightning capacity and transactions are growing fast. "Crypto"'s biggest proponents haven't embraced lightning because they have shitcoins to sell.
>By far the most power-hungry crypto in our study, we found that a single Bitcoin transaction uses an average of 1,173 Kilowatt Hours (kWh). If we consider that the average monthly electricity usage for a UK household is 350 kWh, that’s enough to power the typical UK home for more than three months at a cost of roughly £125 ($173), based on a fixed cost of £0.11 ($0.148) per kWh
>In the U.S, it would equate to roughly 6 weeks of electricity based on an average household electricity usage of 877 kWh per month (U.S Energy Information Administration).
Not quite an entire year, but definitely a number of months.
Also according to digiconomist's latest figures, it's currently at around 1500kWh per transaction. So even worse.
Individual transactions don't use energy. The energy is used to secure the entire value of the ledger back to the very first transaction. Each layer 1 final settlement Bitcoin transaction can support potentially limitless transactions on the layer 2 lightning network. Electricity use does not equal emissions. Digiconomist works for the Dutch central bank.
That bitcoin's biggest proponents still haven't embraced lightning is a pretty clear admission of defeat by bitcoin apologists that bitcoin doesn't actually solve anything, and isn't actually very useful for anything, even with the fix that was supposed to finally bring bitcoin into the promised land.