Transaction times are taking longer and fees are increasing. Bitcoin started small. I don't know what everybody's deal is with nodes. It's so flippin' easy to run a full node, I didn't even know I was running three different ones (
Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Unlimited, Litecoin and DASH). I did notice the significant investment in purchasing mining equipment - including dedicated circuits.
If the question is about SegWit/Lighting, then read the 2004 Ripple white paper by Ryan Fugger.
If we are talking about the purpose of Bitcoin, we should remember the context of its inception and the message encrypted in the genesis block:
"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"This was probably intended to comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking and to provide people with another option: peer-to-peer cash.
If they really believed (Blockstream / Core Developers) in Bitcoin, they would conduct all of their business in Bitcoin. I've got too much invested for a 20 year old, developer who lives in grandma's basement, to think s/he's an economist. If it takes two coins and a hard fork. I was against it a few months ago and, now, I say the sooner the better.
EDIT:
Even if someone was having 51% of the hashing power, that wouldn't mean that bitcoin was not functioning ... the hardware owners might decide to jump to another pool if the jumping of the pool owner is not seen in their lucrative advantage.
Well put and insightful. I've switched pools multiple times and even having miners on multiple pools. Though I've recently switch them all to a BU pool because I am sick of these long confirmation times and high tx fees.