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It's ok not to use it because you disagree with the tradeoffs involved, and it's fine to criticize the model based on your preferences.
But it is still Bitcoin. It's just a way to use Bitcoin that you don't like. It's not like gift cards at all. The money in your gift card can't be withdrawn, isn't interoperable with your bank account, can't work in other stores even if they want to accept them, the analogy doesn't work.
I think you're doing the Lord's work by highlighting the pros and cons, but saying it's not Bitcoin is really not correct.
But it is still Bitcoin.
"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
What's a mint?
call it custodial/paper bitcoin then. yes, the inception of bitcoin didn't recognize custody. this makes sense from a philosophical point but not a realistic one.
as it stands, self-custodial bitcoin is not viable. if that bothers you, you can try to do something about it.
it makes better arguments, but misses the inescapable fact that neither on-chain nor lightning can scale to the world. any system capable of scaling must use zero on-chain data per wallet. this prevents you from providing unilateral exit, and requires that there be some other guarantee.
in https://deposits.ynniv.com i propose "durability": wallets don't escape the layer, but they are guaranteed that, assuming the layer hasn't failed entirely, they will have access to their funds even if a "mint" dies or goes rogue. this is different than ecash, and also different than lightning.
is it still bitcoin? i think so, because it is denominated in bitcoin and doesn't allow fractional reserves. is it as durable as the base chain? no. is it better than ecash? i think so?
we'll see
Dude..I've been paying in person for coffee with lightning almost daily for three years now...square POS is implementing lightning payments into all their terminals for use by businesses by the end of the year. Steak N Shake takes lightning now. It's absolutely built for large scale implementation and really is the only L2 that has any traction behind it in the non-crypto portion of the world. Thanks to massive lightning node operators like cash app and others, people are using lightning more and more. More businesses are running their own nodes also and accepting it as a payment method in person. It's 100% made for large scale adoption. It has flaws yes but I haven't had a payment routing delay in over two years. And I'm a daily lightning user.
Bitcoin and lightning in self custody is bitcoin. But ecash is like custodial lightning without accounts. It is not bitcoin anymore. The giftcard comparison is correct.
If you start running or using a mint you may understand this.
The mint can always disappear with all the sat the users saved. Is this how bitcoin works? Is bitcoin designed for exit scams? I say no!
So you have to realize it is not the same.
If you still think it is the same, you can put all your sat into my mint.