See the screenshot below...

What is going on here? What is with the cat postcard? Someone paid ~ 3.73$ (or the equivalent) to put a cat floating through space... on the blockchain.

Why? I could understand maybe something to 'sell' or 'market' speculatively for 'ordinals' (not that they have value... they are a total fad) but this?

And look at the background -

1 sat per/vB. Why? You're telling me that at 83k USD for Bitcoin, as available as its ever been, with more wallets than ever before including on phones (and some decent ones) that's all the demand there is to make transactions? Cat pictures? Really @ 1 sat/vB?

And if someone is knowledgeable enough about Bitcoin to even 'inscript' a cat picture on the blockchain... Why aren't people knowledgeable enough to actually use it? Where is the monetary demand for transactions?

In North America (at least) places to spend Bitcoin are few and far between... and it looks almost identical on-chain.

What's going on here?

In my opinion this cannot go on forever. Eventually people have to be incentivized + enabled to make their own transactions... otherwise the 're-org' disincentives (mistermed the "security budget") won't exist forever. Eventually, transactions need to constitute the vast majority of transaction fees and all fees at some point after that next century.

As great as Lightning is (I'm a fan) in some ways it makes it worse? If Bitcoiners on Nostr or Stacker News are already using Lightning... then who is going to transact on-chain? Where exactly is the on-chain footprint going to come from?

Individuals won't hesitate to spend 3-4$ to put a 'cat postcard' on the Blockchain... but somehow 12 cents is 'too much' for a basic Bitcoin transaction.

What am I missing?