Quote from: sjefdeklerk on March 28, 2018, 02:01:00 PM

Quote from: DooMAD on March 28, 2018, 01:19:32 PM

You've effectively countered your own point. The sense in people paying the fee to open a channel rather than just making an on-chain transaction, is that it provides that Visa level of scaling.

I don't need to pay, say, $50 to 'open a channel' when I want to buy something with VISA from whatever shop. THAT is the whole point, I'm not sure why you fail to understand such a simple point.

1. Credit cards do charge fees, and not only that: their merchant fees increase the final price of the products you buy with them. With LN, you would have to pay a fee once, and probably never again, if everything works as expected. You can open the channel when you want, probably in a "low-fee timeframe", like weekends.
2. There will be, very likely, providers that open the channel for you for no cost just to ensure you use their LN node as a gateway. I expect this behaviour from exchanges and online wallet providers. Obviously, they want you to pay their (trading) fees, but let's be honest, most Bitcoin users do that anyway, and trading fees are usually low.