Why bother settling on the blockchain at all? The second-layer transactions could just float, like the dollar separated from the gold standard.
You can't mint more bitcoins on the lightning network. There's a 1:1 relation between what's on the lightning network and what's on the blockchain. This is as opposed to fiat (zero relation, currency units can be generated at will), or gold standard in practice (the central bank only having enough gold for a fraction of the notes issued to be redeemed).
L2 is also shit for actual distribution and censorship resistance. Imagine a future where BTC is 100x the current price and the people who got in early are rich as heck and nobody else can afford even a single transaction and must instead rely entirely on L2 services, never actually owning their own wealth.
But that's literally not how the lightning network works? If some intermediary in the chain wants to accept IOUs in place of real bitcoins that's on them, but on both ends you're putting in and getting real bitcoins. By "real bitcoins" I mean they can be redeemed at any point in time by closing the channel, and there's no risk of a bank run (at least to the sender and receiver). If some intermediary decides to accept IOUs instead of real bitcoins, that's on them if it comes crashing down.
Each node can have a state with a total of 2 bitcoins. That's 6 bitcoins.
It'd be a race to close channels, and only if the channel value is above the fee-floor, else the settled value is $0.
>Each node can have a state with a total of 2 bitcoins. That's 6 bitcoins.
Well, no. If you want a channel between A and B with 1 BTC capacity in either direction, you'll need to deposit 2 BTC to fund the channel. Therefore there's 6 BTC total that's locked up. As for the rest of your comment, it's not really clear how it's "separated" from the on-chain value.