1. Honestly, you could be right about fees. I don't keep up with them normally. I use the Strike app for buying Bitcoin, which doesn't charge any fees, including on-chain fees. That said, $1 or $2 might or might not be expensive, depending on how you view the role of on-chain transactions. I see on-chain transactions as "I'm using this to buy a house or car, not a cup of coffee."
2. Private channels exist. Most channels are private. Only channels used for routing must be public. So if you're just opening a channel for payments, the only way for a third-party to know would be use to on-chain analytics to maybe catch you. The actual channel wouldn't be broadcast to the Lightning network. Definitely not perfect, this will always be a downside of the transparent ledger.
3. Yup, this is ultimately the real problem with Lightning, which is that it tends to centralize around large connected nodes. Hopefully, payment splitting will resolve some this.
A lot of people worry about tainted coins, but I think regulators will realize that's a losing battle. Eventually the whole network will be tainted coins.
2. Private channels exist. Most channels are private. Only channels used for routing must be public. So if you're just opening a channel for payments, the only way for a third-party to know would be use to on-chain analytics to maybe catch you. The actual channel wouldn't be broadcast to the Lightning network. Definitely not perfect, this will always be a downside of the transparent ledger.
3. Yup, this is ultimately the real problem with Lightning, which is that it tends to centralize around large connected nodes. Hopefully, payment splitting will resolve some this.
A lot of people worry about tainted coins, but I think regulators will realize that's a losing battle. Eventually the whole network will be tainted coins.