Not exactly banks, but there's a huge chance they will be big corps with a money transmitter license, KYC, AML. What if they refuse your channel or transaction?
It's a common misconception that block size is somehow related to decentralization. In fact you don't need a whole blockchain to verify transactions securely, you only need a few last blocks at max. Also full nodes add nothing to the network, they have no vote, only miners and actual users do.
No, they are secure, you just have to trust miners a bit more so they don't throw your transaction out of mempool. I would even argue that all the complications involved in setting up and using Lightning network make it less secure than 0-conf.
0-confirmation transactions were working excellent before Bitcoin Core added SegWit and other useless stuff. You don't need to wait for a new block if your signed transaction is in the mempool, and it's secure enough for small payments.
Lightning will become centralized into services like banks and Paypal since it's too difficult to use for an average person, which completely defeats the idea of Bitcoin as P2P cryptocurrency.
The problem is Bitcoin Core, at least some part of it’s developers, pushing their own agenda to implement SegWit and Lightning network. Both solutions have a lot of technical debt and possible security problems, they were controversial from the beginning, that’s why miners were refusing to implement SegWit for over a year. Now we have Bitcoin Cash which has solved those problems in a simple way, at least for now. Bitcoin Cash is more like a desperate effort to fix the damage done by Bitcoin Core and make Bitcoin usable again.
I've had pretty much the same experience. Bought Coin via pre-order over a year ago, couple month ago found out that it's very unlikely to be supported in my country ever. Asked them for refund - got some template response, asked again - silence.
1. Bitcoin is the open base for monetary innovation, you should compare it to internet protocols like IP or HTTP, Linux, not some privately-owned social networks.
2. There's hardly any need to enhance anything in bitcoin itself, the security is enough, nobody has proven otherwise.
3. Alternative cryptocurrencies are 99.9% copies of bitcoin with hardly any innovation. Only proof-of-stake(ppcoin) algorithm and scrypt hashing(litecoin) are real changes and it is questionable if they add any value.
4. The slow speed of transactions (~10min), which other cryptocurrencies are trying to "fix", could be easily brought to instant with a help of third-party service, there are many way of doing it.
5. Bitcoin developers and pool operators aren't some kind of "kings", they are merely leaders guiding the community.
You're completely wrong. Immigrants and foreign workers are adding to the employment competition, they raise the overall quality of the workforce. There will be a major crisis if they leave, trust me.