You can use Lightning (a Bitcoin technology) to send BTC which is extremely cheap in comparison. Talking fractions of a cent.

How do you use the Lightning network?

Check out strike app, it is a managed lightning wallet denominated in USD that allows venmo/cashapp style pay to user transactions; and payments on the lightning network. All funded from a bank account.

Use muun or phoenix wallets, they're very usable.

Isn't that only for Bitcoin Cash?

Nope you can directly use Bitcoin Cash with subcent transaction fees without any other layers. A place near me sells Kava for BCH (supposedly, I have not been to a bar in a loooonnnnggg time).

You can use Ethereum Layer 2 tech like Loopring, zkSync, and eventually Optimism which Coinbase supports in the Coinbase Wallet. They haven't even added support for Lightning

Nobody in the real world is using any of this.

...yet, all these are fairly new. Give it another 2-5 years for implementations and integrations.

Also, it’s already used in defi, if you count that as “real world”. Reminds me of when anything on the internet wasnt “real”.

Sorry but I've been following the last decade of the crypto world. In a decade I have not seen a single "defi" product sticking around because there just doesn't seem to be real demand for these products.

Considering how many spaces in new startups developed massive traction in that span of time (social networks, other forms of digital payments and banking, online marketplaces) the fact that there are no star products in such a span of time gives me little consideration.

Wait what? DeFi pretty much started booming from last summer.. it hasn't existed for a decade. Do you not know Uniswap? It's existed since around 2017. Sushiswap? even Pancakeswap?

There's $80 billion locked in DeFi right now. https://defipulse.com/

Uniswap has more transaction fees than the Bitcoin network https://cryptofees.info/history/2021-05-16

Institutions are even starting to get in https://twitter.com/stanikulechov/status/1394390461968633859

I call bs. There is not $80 billion USD locked in defi -- the world has not taken $80 billion USD, bought crypto with it, and put the crypto into defi code. Like, where are the receipts?

What has happened is defi tokens have appreciated through speculation. Sites like defi pulse erroneously represent the wealth locked into defi contracts as token_price * tokens_locked, which is trivial to manipulate for shallow-market tokens. Like, I can spin up a token with 1 billion units, buy one token for $1, and put the remaining tokens into a defi contract. Voila -- defi pulse reports $81 billion locked.

EDIT: downvotes aren't receipts, and downvoting doesn't change the accounting discrepancy.

An 80 billion market cap in Ponzi scheme products with no star companies that testify the usage of said products sounds like a scam.

Aave, Compound are both not Ponzi schemes and allow you to lock things like USDC and ETH (also not Ponzi schemes) for others to borrow, and earn interest. It's automated lending, I don't understand how people are not excited about this.

No demand for DeFi? Are you serious? Total value in DeFi has gone from sub $1b to over $70b in the last year.

>Give it another 2-5 years for implementations and integrations.

This is what I heard when Lightning went live.

Lightning usability is horrible and requires 2 parties to be online at the same time, whereas with Ethereum scaling solutions, you can use your regular metamask wallet to deposit, and you're on L2.

And very likely just like Lighting we'll hear similar excuses as to why it doesn't work.

The early adopters will be the ones who reap the rewards.

Via the Polygon commit chain, these issues are fixed. Polygon's adoption is through the roof, saving Ethereum's butt. Hence the massive price climb.

Does Polygon stay relevant after Ethereum's PoS?

Yes. Ethereum's scaling with PoS is still fairly slow, and as the biggest network, I'm bullish on the continuing need for 2nd level solutions.