Yes I think in a lot of way it's a failure, most Bitcoin maxis are in denial.

i just a saw tweet from a maxi telling people to use custodial lightning wallet - this is centralization. this is what we're trying to avoid. Goes against everything Satoshi envisioned

I stopped running a lightning node because it's not real user friendly, i lost funds, my channels got closed. it's not reliable enough to make payments (unless connected to large centralized nodes) & I don't trust it's privacy. of course, if this changes in the future, I may go back. Until then, i prefer onchain.

problem is there no privacy onchain, unless you're willing to put in a lot of work & discipline, Coinjoin is super expensive, time consuming, & it only obfuscates your transactions.

Bitcoin fees will likely skyrocket rise as the price rises. The cost to open a lightning channel will rise too.

To me, Monero is the next logical move to scale and get privacy (top 2 priorities). It has dynamic block sizes to scale, keep fees low & it's about to get a massive upgrade to privacy - will have a huge anonymity set. Will make Coinjoin look like a joke.

Also, it's the most used & widely accepted privacy coin online (#1 on darknet markets), has lots of support for wallets, there's plenty of options to trade P2P without KYC, various decentralized exchanges (more coming online), working atomic swaps too....it's a thriving network. almost no one is paying attention to. IMO it's the only one that has a real chance to flip BTC.