Sleeping beauty Bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2B

I was also around when bitcoin just started out. Many people wanted it to be a global revolution in finance.

But instead it turned into a game of "hodl" to get rich.

Scams were openly perpetrated in the forums.

I became completely disillusioned. What exactly does bitcoin offer the world today?

You can get rich by... having it

Sort of like gold I guess.

I have never figured out "lightning network", their "solution" for payments. (bitcoin payments are so impractical that they have a different, separate system to use for actual payments, that works completely differently.) Seems very convoluted. I need to pay a huge fee just to make a channel so I can receive anything? And there is something about liquidity? I implemented bitcoin stuff and still cannot figure lightning out.

bitcoin is mainly for buying it and looking at a chart.

In the long term everything goes to zero, so an asset that pays no dividends but has significant storage costs isn't much good for investment.

Bitcoin holders as a group are constantly losing money by definition. Some of them cash out at a profit, I suppose.