You are right, i was stupid enough to believe it could work in a self custodial way with low fees. The way it evolved so far is a shame in my opinion, most people use custodial wallets due to the terrible UX with self hosted LN.

In the end, we just recreate a banking / paypal system where people get KYCed, have to follow AML rules, have zero privacy and not even low fees. Ridiculous.  Slowly the smaller lightning service providers will be bought up from the larger ones. Just like banks.

Custodial services will inflate the supply over time eventually, because it is easy to do and nobody can check if they do it or not. 

I got into Bitcoin because it promised P2P self custodial digital cash, which would be revolutionary. To me it seems this chance is gone on BTC until something drastically changes, which i do not see at the moment.

But i can not complain, we dreamed of dumping on wall street and now the ones interested in freedom can finally do it and move on. 

I would not have thought i would ever say that but BCH is the real Bitcoin.