You could probably afford to lose the price of a cup of coffee.
Bitcoin can not afford to have a billion people using a different currency/money substitutes to pay for their coffee.
No but it could afford to have one or two eg pettycoin connected over a 2wp, freeing up bitcoin main from sub $10 transactions.
It has sharded validation, its not an alt its a micropayment network bitcoin auxiliary chain. He thinks he can get to 100k TPS. I really dont think you want that on the main chain because its weaker, and he cut down a lot of bitcoin features to get it. But its useful.
He has a video up about pettycoin chain sharding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzst_gChOr8.
Adam