Lightning is trustless bitcoin as long as the sats are sitting in a channel on your node. It's not without risk as you essentially have a hot wallet.

Bitcoin is different to gold in that custody can be verified & transferred near instantly.

This cycle was dominated by centralised fractional reserve bitcoin (eg FTX, Celsius). They artificially inflated the supply until it became apparent what they were doing. Until there was a bank run. People found out that they didn't own this bitcoin & price was suppressed by artificially satisfying demand.

I think we should continue to be wary about this risk while searching for more decentralised custodial solutions. I prefer the Fedi model to liquid's because the risk can be more localised (it can also be just as centralised).

At the end of the day, the ability to control a UTxO trumps any claim on bitcoin. Teach people to save with UTxOs and be wary of the risk in anything else.

When fees escalated, even people's small DCA UTxO's became a problem, especially if they needed to spend them.