So I tried the éclair Lightning wallet and the famous StarBlocks coffee test.
My findings are the following.
I first opened a channel:
0.02 BTC ‘reserved’ in lighting network (0.01 was the minimum!!!!)
paid 0.000286 fees for that (about 5 dollars give or take at time of writing, virtually because we're on Testnet)
It took 40 minutes to reach the #2 confirmation limit, before the channel was set up
Once the #Lighting channel was up :
I paid 0.000017 for ‘coffee’ and had instant confirmation (like under 2 tenths of a second) and it cost me 10 satoshi in fees, which is very very low of course).
So in total, I still paid like 5 dollars for having the privilege to use part of my coins for a payment channel, and within that payment channel I could buy cheap and almost without fee). this is the pre-loaded pre-pay card system… I don’t like that I can’t use these 0.2 BTC for anything I want while it’s ‘reserved’ in lighting.
I see the benefit if you're going to pay within that lighting channel's bubble anyway, I see the benefits ... but it's not something I want to use since I need to RESERVE coins for having these low fees... and pay on top of that to have this possibility. I'm puzzled by the old-fashioned way of thinking behind this idea actually. It looks complicated at first, but all they do is take an amount of money, do the transaction like they always do on-chain (high fees, long waiting times) and then once that's passed you can be 'free' to use it instantly. This is rather rotten actually...
My conclusion: "locking" a certain amount of your funds in a lightning channel is not for me. It feels like you make one big payment to a payment provider, and from then onwards you're stuck within that realm. Like having a pre-loaded pre-paid card on hand that you can only use in one specific brand of shops.
I feel limited, I feel like my funds are no longer mine,... I think this is (safe from the spectacular speed) something that is NOT the use of bitcoin at all. (I'm not a bitcoin cash supporter at all, but I have to say that this Lightning network is a turn for the worse for bitcoin...)
I'm not supporting this at all...