Most of use hold BTC mostly as a store of value - but if that is all that it will ever be, then it wont be different than gold today sitting in vaults of banks & doing nothing.

Since BTC is for everyone, we can't do much about corpos & banks hogging it. The only thing that we can do is not to sell it to suits in exchange for depreciating fiat. Until that time when BTC becomes wildly accepted as money an we won't need to sell it at all.

The 2025 mainstream narrative (coming from politicians, corpos & even guys like Saylor) is that Bitcoin is a commodity. This idea must not entrench itself or else BTC will just sit in vaults of corporations and banks, doing nothing but being an instrument of speculation (like gold, more or less).

For Bitcoin to be money we have to transact with it. Don't sell it back for worthless fiat, instead spend it for goods & services from businesses that support BTC (as much as your ability / environment allows it).

Saylor wants your BTC, Blackrock wants your BTC... just don't sell it to them.

@OP, what else is a (good) hedge against inflation in your opinion? What has performed better over the last 5+ years? What has preserved your purchasing power better? Gold is maybe the second best and it doesn't come even close to BTC in performance & attributes as money / capital.

Volatility is only a problem if you have a short time horizon. Save for at least 5 years (better yet 10+ or 15+) and volatility becomes irrelevant. Also every asset worth trading is somehow volatile.

Bitcoin has better characteristics (as capital) than gold & real estate. You own it yourself, you can move it easily, no upkeep, no repairs, no expensive security required, border-less, permission-less...

First you laugh at Bitcoin maximalists
Then you play the shitcoin casino
Then you get burned & lose wealth
Finally you become a Bitcoin maxi yourself (and actually start studying the technology instead of just trying to get rich fast)

Give it time. You'll get burned in one of the many shitcoin ponzi schemes, rug-pulls, scams, "to the moon WEB3 supertechnology whatever"... and then realize Bitcoin is the safest decentralized digital money and everything else trends to zero, when expressed in BTC 

Assuming a state actor with near unlimited resources (time, money & legal power), my guess is everything can be analyzed. Of course they would need to obtain data from every wallet involved in the transfers, while the base layer completely open and easy to inspect.

I'm thinking more in the sphere of what's plausible - how much resources would a state employ, to go after a random citizen who might have spend 50 bucks of BTC on a dinner, without declaring capital gains on it? For example. Not something that is nearly 100% anonymous in all cases (and requires a lot of technical knowledge), just less traceable and less worth going after. On-chain is too easy to follow, while Lightning adds just enough obfuscation to become a hassle - as far as I understand it.

Then there's the consideration that KYC is a huge security issue for end users (hacking of exchanges, data leaks, etc). A person doesn't need nefarious reasons for wanting to improve their anonymity. I didn't understand these things when I first started to save in Bitcoin. There's a lot to learn.

Thanks again everyone for your inputs! 

I indeed plan to hold most of my BTC into the far future, when adoption and infrastructure to spend it will be so common, we won't have to use exchanges anymore, nor have the need to turn it into fiat. At that point the absurdity of paying capital gains on BTC we spend will hopefully also be gone.

But my question was mostly just technical - to better understand these things. So far I haven't parted with a single SAT yet. I don't trade or anything like that.

@Satofan44, thanks for the extensive reply. Much appreciated!!

Good day, everyone!

Firstly, I hope this is the correct sub-forum to post this question.

I'm not new to Bitcoin, but I'm a complete noob when it comes to Lightning network. I was playing around with various BTC/Lightning wallets on my phone and pondering a question. Say I have this scenario:

I buy BTC on a KYC exchange and transfer it (on-chain) to a hot wallet on my desktop. From there I transfer it (again on-chain) to Muun wallet on my phone. From Muun I pass it through Lightning network to Speed wallet, also on my phone and finally I send it (on-chain) to my final cold storage address. Neither Muun or Speed wallet have any KYC data (except knowing my phone number, I guess?). Is that one Lightning transfer enough to cut the trace or it is still somehow possible to associate the final address back to the original exchange?

Thanks