- No one is forced to use the blockchain when it is congested. Quite the opposite. The high prices are supposed to be a self-correcting mechanism and to put a back-off signal for all those that can wait.
- "holding" assets do not cost anything on the blockchain.
- There are ways to dial the "perfomance/cost/decentralization" trade-off knobs. There are off-chain systems to move funds. Use centralized exchanges when possible, and you can avoid paying anything. Pool your resources with people that you can trust/cooperate, and you can have a separate ledger [0] that can abstract the different blockchains into one single "balance" and only interacts with the blockchain when you need to actually move the funds.
> I suppose you mean a larger group of people than my closest family and a bunch of friends?
No. I mean exactly on that scale. It could be friends and family, it could be your employer and your co-workers. It could be you and some members of your church.
My recommendation on Hub20 is "don't open an account in any instance unless you and the operator could knock on each other's doors".
> more than an established physical bank?
Trust is a sliding scale. It's up to you to know how comfortable you'll be by leaving funds on the hands of each.
- No one is forced to use the blockchain when it is congested. Quite the opposite. The high prices are supposed to be a self-correcting mechanism and to put a back-off signal for all those that can wait.
- "holding" assets do not cost anything on the blockchain.
- There are ways to dial the "perfomance/cost/decentralization" trade-off knobs. There are off-chain systems to move funds. Use centralized exchanges when possible, and you can avoid paying anything. Pool your resources with people that you can trust/cooperate, and you can have a separate ledger [0] that can abstract the different blockchains into one single "balance" and only interacts with the blockchain when you need to actually move the funds.
[0] https://hub20.io/about