yes, core dev and small blockists, in general, have this idea that everyone should be charged fees every step of the way. hence you hear Trace Mayer talk about "what are you willing to pay to hire Bitcoin?" point being of course, is that being geeks with an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the code, they will be able to exploit fee making activities like smart contracts, LN hubs, consulting fees thru Blockstream, building of offchain solns like LN & SC's, etc, etc. the strategy couldn't be more clear.
as a result, their new mantra is Bitcoin as an expensive "settlement network". what happened to all the talk i used to hear and espoused to that Bitcoin will be brought into the world by the unbanked 6 billion ppl on this planet who don't have access to western banking? Andreas should be livid at this hijacked new direction. instead, he's bought into the siren song of "innovation" thru extensible smart contracts and wide open scripting systems. you see this attitude all the time on the Slack Channels where apparent poor folk like Depesh (Indian i presume) get slapped down by the core trolls who enter the channel espousing that "Bitcoin was never meant to be cheap or for the masses", "never was for coffee or donuts", "never meant for widespread adoption" and other such bullshit. never mind the whole idea of a settlement network won't even work.
