As the financial system is set up right now, Bitcoin has a lot of potential to reduce friction. For cross-country payments as well as for buying coffee:
Speed, fees, finality.
But the lightning network will have to mature first. We will see if the global financial system evolves faster than the Bitcoin ecosystem. I would expect Bitcoin's ecosystem to evolve faster.
The fact that Bitcoin's blockchain is unusable without unofficial, unreliable and slow L2 chains is kinda evidence that it doesn't have much potential left. If you're a serious country considering using Bitcoin, why even use Lightning at all when you could use a fundamentally better-designed currency? Why invest in Bitcoin if it's already breaking?
It is only unusable for small transfers. Considering it is at only 10% of the Gold market cap - which is even more unusable for small transfers - I think it would even have a lot of potential left without L2s.
As for Lightning being unreliable and slow - I don't see a technical reason for it to stay this way.
What do you consider a "better-designed currency"?
As the financial system is set up right now, Bitcoin has a lot of potential to reduce friction. For cross-country payments as well as for buying coffee:
Speed, fees, finality.
But the lightning network will have to mature first. We will see if the global financial system evolves faster than the Bitcoin ecosystem. I would expect Bitcoin's ecosystem to evolve faster.