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Money quote:

> It has been clear to us that the current bitcoin network is completely incapable of functioning as a payment processing network, not just for "cups of coffees" but even for multi-million dollar transactions, and we are using SegWit.

This is laughable. I transferred btc today in about 30 mins.
For what fee?
For a fee that’s barely a rounding error for a ‘multimillion dollar payment’
I tried to transfer $20 out of coinbase and it was going to cost $32 to do so.

Seems like if you're not doing multimillion dollar payments it's not worth it. Then again, even if you are it's not worth it.

And 30 minutes is acceptable...?
Yes? Confirmations in bitcoin were never instant...
Don't ACH and wire transfers take at least a day? And as a disclaimer I'm not for or against either coin.
In the EU, since November 2017, wire transfers take 15 seconds (Disclaimer: some banks are still rolling it out).

Welcome to the world of the Single European Payments Area Instant Credit Transfer Scheme.

Ah. I didn't know this. Even in different currencies?
Until 2018, SEPA transactions only clear in EUR, I think from 2018 on there will also be support for other EU currencies.
Very nice.

I spent a lot of money and time before diacovering Transferwise.

Wait, did not Bitcoin enable SegWit already?
They did, but adoption has been very limited.

If you look at fees from the activation date (a few months ago now) it has not moved the needle at all.

> we're looking to convert some of our funds to Bitcoin Cash

He's not "switching" to bcash

This is somewhat off-topic but I might as well ask this here: who are respected technical people who support Bitcoin Cash?
Ryan X. Charles at Yours comes to mind. Many technical founders of Bitcoin co's were behind SegWit2x, which flamed out spectacularly, and some are switching to Bitcoin Cash- eg Stephen Pair of BitPay.
I’m sort of surprised the centralized Bitcoin businesses like BitPay, Coinbase, and exchanges aren’t collaborating to transparently push transactions between them off-chain.

Lightning Network isn’t even required, just simple unidirectional payment channels would allow them to amortize the transaction fees over many transactions, and be instantly confirmed.

The only tricky bit is the sender knowing when it can go off-chain. With BitPay soon requiring Payment Protocol that becomes easier [1]

1. https://blog.bitpay.com/payment-protocol/

Some exchanges use Blockstream's Liquid federated sidechain to do inter-exchange settlement.

Agreed though, payment channels have been around a long time.

Gavin Andresen, one of the original developers of Bitcoin
Nobody, as they now make sure that they have nothing to do with altcoins. They put an enormous amount of effort to keep Bitcoin decentralized, at the same time trying to improve fungibility.
In related news, Adam Back (CEO of Blockstream, current stewards of BTC) inadvertently admitted to hiring people to shape the narrative in social media.
For a SegWit transaction they should have looked at fee/weight unit. Paying $8 for a transaction worth $60k is just being too cheap.