[patricius]

Maybe Lightning Network will scale, maybe not. But VISA or Mastercard could build on top of Bitcoin and allow many more transactions than the base layer does. You would use the base layer for final settlements.

Already now you can get a VISA/Mastercard and use that to spend Bitcoin. But of course, every layer on top of Bitcoin presents its own set of trade-offs in terms of trust and security.

What constitutes waste is completely subjective.