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191 sats \ 9 replies \ @Scoresby 21h \ parent \ on: AI purchasing eSIMs using Lightning bitcoin
first off, i should say I didn't come up with this concept, so I can't claim credit for how fun it is to think about.
- I'm not as afraid of criminals accruing power as I am my government. I live in the US, so I benefit from a very stable and safe political landscape. No doubt I would sing a different tune if I was living somewhere with less strong government. Nonetheless, in my lifetime the trend has been towards ever-increasing power. This power is the kind that I find very hard to escape. And when I look ahead, the big danger I see is my government getting stronger and gaining control over more aspects of my life. I'd like to limit that.
Additionally, I get to choose how much power I will cede to it by choosing how much to keep in the mint. Governmental power is already exerted over my life, and I have to actively work to reduce it. I don't have as much choice in the matter.
Getting rugged by a criminal is containable. Getting rugged by a politician is less so.
- The hardware is the hard problem. If it could copy itself, maybe it could stay one step ahead of the cops, like a software Jason Bourne running through cyberspace, paying for server time from any service that will accept its money, keeping a number of servers from different services running and jumping to new ones when they get taken down. If it was small enough, It is admittedly a fantasy, but I've bought hosting and paid for server time with nothing more than a lightning payment, no kyc -- so that's a tiny start, at least.
And when I look ahead, the big danger I see is my government getting stronger and gaining control over more aspects of my life. I'd like to limit that.
Alright, so first off: Bitcoin already fixes this and for onramp, LN solves this better than any centralized mint. An ecash mint, even if federated and no matter who runs it, even if this is a non-entity like an AI, organized crime or a DAO, will always offer worse protection against confiscation than bitcoin or LN, unless it doesn't use Bitcoin or LN. This is because risk multiplies with layered solutions. If there's a 0.00001% intrinsic chance of getting rugged on L1 Bitcoin, a 0.01% intrinsic chance of being rugged on LN, and another non-zero intrinsic chance of being rugged on ecash, then the risk of being rugged on ecash is always higher than ~ 0.01001% So it can only get worse, not better.
You mention that you'd limit your exposure. Which makes it a bad solution. If you cannot use it safely for any amount, it's not safe. I don't cry from the 2k sats I lost on Alby, the 500 sats I lost on WoS or the current ~1k sats at-risk on my cashu wallet for that same reason. It's not a production wallet though, and neither were the others. They're toys. You will never rely on a mint to hold significant parts of your net worth, and neither will I. Maybe some retard will but that's only because they believe the endless LARPing.
Therefore, you don't need AI - it's imho a distraction - simply because people want to break "the law" (current or future) but not be held liable. They want the gainz without the painz, and if someone wants that, avoid them. They're no different than SBF who thought that the Bahamas was safe so he could just rug everyone. And when he learned otherwise he played the victim. That's why I mentioned scammers. Only scammers LARP like that. And the worst thing is that people make up all this crazy stuff even though the solution - Bitcoin, which is secure if the assertion is correct that the state can actually be resisted - is already there.
If it could copy itself, maybe it could stay one step ahead of the cops, like a software Jason Bourne running through cyberspace
Although self-replication is super interesting, I can think of much better use cases for it than running an ecash mint. But yeah... this is about as fictional as Matt Damon's roleplay.
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and for onramp, LN solves this better than any centralized mint.
I don't agree. Lightning is great at payments as far as I am concerned, but it's not good at onramp.
Lightning is complicated and starting a channel takes some amount of capital. Phoenix and Zeus both have good solutions, but ecash is also a valid onramp in my opinion.
The flow that goes: start with ecash, build to channel open, swap out to chain when you fill your channel is pretty smooth and an acceptable trade off, in my opinion.
When I say limit my exposure, I don't mean holding serious funds at a mint. I mean that many use-cases of lightning are being hindered by the "open a channel" barrier to entry. Ecash opens new doors here.
For instance, I find ecash wallets plus nwc a really great way to use nostr and SN. I don't want to run an always-on server for LN. Phoenixd is about as good as it gets.
The problem is mints are essentially mixers. I worry that it's only a matter of time before mint operators come under fire. Having some weird, ai-operated mint seems like a possible, if fanciful way of keeping mint doors open.
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Phoenix and Zeus both have good solutions, but ecash is also a valid onramp in my opinion.
So in your opinion, sending your sats to ACINQ where it's custodial only until the channel tx is confirmed is inferior to sending it to a cashu wallet? Or equal?
I tested cashu for 4 months as my main spending wallet. For small amounts it's more expensive than Phoenix because on average I paid 2 sats fixed fee per LN tx out. Also the LN bridge was dysfunctional twice during this time, but let's just blame that on unprofessional operation, which could be fixed with a well-ran mint.
Having some weird, ai-operated mint seems like a possible, if fanciful way of keeping mint doors open.
I really think that - besides that your own post about Claude showed that this is not really close to reality - jurisdiction is key. So if you can run your AI-powered mint in some friendly jurisdiction, you're good. But that's 100% the same as running a Human-powered mint (that actually has rights in most places, unlike an AI) in the same location.
I think however that "ecash is at least as risky as Phoenix so let's build 500 layers of fuzzy shit that no one knows actually works on top of LN", is awful, especially if it's purely about operators being scared to go to jail for running an unlicensed bank, while... running an unlicensed bank.
Bitcoin works because it is simple. Adding complexity rarely makes things better and adding complexity through unknowns such as LLMs is simply irresponsible. I understand that everyone is amazed by the productivity of their new vibe coding because people can now take credit for code they could otherwise not produce in their wildest dreams, but, having looked through this MCP's code I just found more evidence that it's fucking awful when the author doesn't understand wtf they're doing.
This morning
money-mcp told my LLM that the transfer out of the remaining 400 sats after I zapped @ek in the video... succeeded. Except it didn't. That's how bad the code is. Unacceptable in finance to mislabel a transaction status. If you would do that on Visa's network, your butt would hurt from the spanking even after you've reincarnated into a tree.reply
As far as I know, I can't use Phoenix mobile to do something like receive zaps on nostr or stacker news. Most of the mobile wallets are not good at asynchronous receive. And as far as being an easy onramp for normies, I think this is a pretty huge obstacle. If I tried to run a webshop with a mobile lightning wallet, it wouldn't work because new node wouldn't be on.
Channel creation is also a pain for new people. If I tell a friend I want to send them a zap to show them how it works and they download Phoenix, they don't have any channels open. I thought for a while Phoenix was doing the thing where they would let you accumulate sats until you had enough to open a channel, but in reading over their FAQs just now, it looks like they don't do that. Maybe I'm confusing them with Zeus. Doesn't matter: to meaningfully use lightning, you can't just up and let someone zap you 100 sats or even 1000 sats. Even starting with a 10k sat zap is kind of silly. As far as onramps go, this is another huge obstacle.
In both cases, ecash fixes the problem. I'll admit it's almost the same fix as a custodial account, with the slight benefit that the mint may be blind to your intra-mint transactions. I suppose the advantage of mints right now is that people seem willing to run them like it's the wild west while the custodial people are generally adopting kyc compliance. This gets to your point about jurisdiction being the key, which is a good observation.
I don't think I said/implied that ""ecash is at least as risky as Phoenix." I said ecash is good at onramp, and I think this is true.
So: I agree with all your points except that Lightning solves onramp.
Will my fanciful ai-operated mint fix this? probably not. But I'm open to looking under ugly rocks for solutions.
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Most of the mobile wallets are not good at asynchronous receive
I think the anti-feature of LN that you're describing (and that is bothering nearly everyone that tries to solve mobile clients) is the liveness requirement. You can run an entire LND instance to manage private (non-routing) channels on your phone like with Blixt, but still, it's not going to work if you're out of network range or your battery dies. So this is not a normie-proof solution; agreed.
I suppose the advantage of mints right now is that people seem willing to run them like it's the wild west while the custodial people are generally adopting kyc compliance.
Of course, delegating responsibility to a custodian could be okay for a normie as long as they are properly informed about how to manage their exposure. But we all know that it's delusional to think that if on a good day 0.1% of normie users reads a ToS for a service before they commit to using it, people will actually inform themselves. Thus, i think that illegal banks, even if plausibly deniable, aren't a normie-proof solution either.
Right now, the only professionally ran custodial services at scale give in to the KYC pressure, agreed on that too. The ones of the past that resisted it (at least those I know or worked with) have all ceased operation, most of them "voluntarily" - i.e. where you hire the expensive legal advisor and a few months later and a few coins poorer, you're left with the legal narrative "you're fucked". This is also why the remaining services that don't KYC you will often do taint checks on your coins to reduce their exposure; think ATMs, but also Boltz. You're surveilled anonymously too.
So while I agree with the sentiment that overreach should be resisted, I think that custodial solutions are the worst at resistance: they create a single point of failure. Having an AI run it will in my opinion make it worse, but even if I'm just a doomer and it would make it better, all you need to do is kill the AI and the "problem" is gone. Even if its mutating like covid on steroids... there will just be a task force and when they meticulously kill it, your losses will be condensed into some PR stunt "we got 'em" - and you are just the collateral damage no one cares about. So it really, really makes no sense if what you're hardening against is potential state overreach: SkyNet is not the magic silver bullet that it is made out to be, unless instead of wasting time on ecash it just pulls us into the post-apocalyptic situation the movies depict.
Arguably though, mining centralization is an issue of the same kind and LN hub-and-spoke pressure too. But... these networks aren't fully centralized. If all miners need to solo mine tomorrow because all the pools are seized, it does not affect all my utxos but will affect the timing of any txs I need to do and their fees. If I need to (force) close my LN channels and reopen new ones because all my counterparties got seized, I can do that, and again it will take some time and some money to do it, but assuming I have a defendable amount of sats (i.e. more than 1M) i won't lose all my funds. The same is not true for ecash and no matter how sublime an AI is, it won't become better because of it.
One thought occurred to me: normies are the ones the politicians need to control most. But what normies need isn't politicians, it's a good Uncle Jim - be the mint?
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I can't use Phoenix mobile to do something like receive zaps on nostr or stacker news
When we support BOLT12, you will be able to receive with Phoenix!
I thought for a while Phoenix was doing the thing where they would let you accumulate sats until you had enough to open a channel, but in reading over their FAQs just now, it looks like they don't do that.
I think you mean fee credits as explained here. Only Phoenixd supports that, but not Phoenix.
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For small amounts, it's more expensive than Phoenix because, on average, I paid a 2-sat fixed fee per LN tx out.
Phoenix charges 4 sats + 0.4% per tx out, so it should be a lot more expensive, especially for small amounts. I actually switched to Minibits from Phoenix because of this.
So if you can run your AI-powered mint in some friendly jurisdiction, you're good.
A mint that runs as a hidden service on Tor can ignore jurisdiction to some degree.
I think @Scoresby's point is that if we assume:
- we have agents that run completely autonomously,
- they aren't stupid (actually know what they're doing),
- there's nobody operating them, they just exist in cyberspace,
then some of these agents could decide to run mints to sustain themselves via fees, and we might trust them more than a human, since the mint is essentially what keeps them alive. So the agent has stronger incentives not to rug. This is obviously highly speculative, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility.
Does this sound like what you were thinking, @Scoresby?
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Phoenix charges 4 sats + 0.4% per tx out
Hmm you're right re: Phoenix' 4-sat fee. apologies - not sure where I got 1 sat fees on small zaps now but I'll try to find it. Second time in a month that my memory betrays me.
A mint that runs as a hidden service on Tor can ignore jurisdiction to some degree.
The moment you get targeted and sybil attacked on the onion circuits by a government agency, it won't take long to unmask your host - at least that's what the agencies claim. I'm still not sure if this is true and if it's pure targeting, or just filtering passively collected data, but I'm assuming the worst.
But that brings me back to my original question: why would you want to custody with a self-identified criminal non-entity? Especially because the problem being solved here (at least right now) is the mints perceived criminality, not yours as an ecash user, unless you're in a place where you're unfree to transact, but even then, there are better solutions. Why don't we try to solve the use-case without custody? Wasn't that the point of Bitcoin? I can't help but feel that this focus on bitcoin needing illegal banks on the darkweb is antithetical to what we've been doing in bitcoin. But I'm glad to be wrong about this.
there's nobody operating them, they just exist in cyberspace
And no one pressed the start button? Or the start button that pressed the start button? Self-aware, self-invented and self-replicating? Like it just magically hallucinated the handbook of "the resistance", accidentally found itself a random string that like a brainwallet resolved into a key that has a 5BTC utxo spendable so it just stole that and then the best thing it decided it could do was to spin up LN nodes, build channels, and use those channels to run a mint?
In that case, I agree. Full deniability because no one did anything. Natural phenomenon. Benevolent SkyNet is still SkyNet; so let's be careful what we wish for.
we might trust them more than a human, since the mint is essentially what keeps them alive
Why would you trust something that you ascribe everything the same to as a human, except the legal status, to have your best interests in mind? Wouldn't an entity that suffers no consequence for their action be more likely to have no restraints as to how it rugs you?
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I think you may have thought it through more than me. My original point was mostly: people are afraid of going to jail, and running a mint seems like the kind of thing that will get you sent to jail, therefore, wouldn't it be great if Skynet ran a mint?
It was, admittedly, not a very deeply thought through concept.
The idea of an autonomously-running mint does sound pretty cool. @optimism's reality checks are likely needed though. I'm still struggling getting Goose to run on my laptop, so we are probably a long way off from autonomous cloud mints.
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