If bitcoin replaces the middlemen of transactions, why does Square and Jack Dorsey promote them?
...or decentralized settlement networks like LN.
Not very, though. Lightning recentralizes the Bitcoin blockchain to improve efficiency.
"10 percent of [Lightning] nodes control 80 percent of funds on the network." — Bitcoin’s Lightning Network Is Growing 'Increasingly Centralized,' Researchers Find[1]
[1] https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-lightning-network-is-growi...