the word bank has such broad definitions and origins, including the sandbank of a shore, bank-shot in billiards, as well as a blood bank. trades of slave and others goods happened at a bank, helpful funds were lent out over a bankers bench, trick shots were performed by banking the table, and lives we're saved thanks to blood banks.

"fractional reserve institutions" and "money lenders" are some specific names the financial schemes can be called. "bitcoin bank" could be a fine term to use, but when based on the traditional meaning, it's an obvious misnomer, because bitcoin can be used for so many things, including savings, authentication, and computation. certain words and definitions get phased out, and I really hope that the financial meaning of word "bank" will sink into oblivion.

[insert meme of a hopeful guy saying "no, no, no, not like that!" when the banks beget some new bizarre meaning in the technocratic dystopian world, haha.]

my grandmother has always told me - "turn on your own brain." she survived communism, and so will I. my bitcoin shall not be socialized. some people will want to socialize their bitcoin "for the greater good" - we'll see how that works out for them.

I think banks are thinking more about using their own CBDC and gold, than adopting bitcoin as the reserve money. That bitcoin banks idea from Hal was expressing the concerns about scaling, but we replaced bitcoin banks with solutions like Lightning Network, now LSPs, and other new level 2 solutions.

An outcome I’ve thought about is that some, even a majority, may never stop using the “dollar.” Only the fractional reserve policies and balance sheets of the banks they use may change. Not the outcome that I want, but for many people there may appear to be no transition at all. I talk to my dad about this sometimes and it seems like an intermediate state that’s definitely plausible

Ultimately yes I agree with Sailor and Finney.

I've said for years that while there's nothing wrong with self custody and hardware wallets, it's naïve to think that even 1% of people will go that route.

Being a custodian is a 3,000 year old profession. It doesn't matter if it's gold, or fiat, or livestock, or books... People WANT to pay other people to keep their stuff safe. And Bitcoin is stuff. And people want other people to keep it safe for them.

People can complain all they want about nyknc etc., but the reality of human psychology, let alone the transaction scaling problem, is that custodians will always exist.

Given the axiom that custodians will exist, the Bitcoin ecosystem owes it to the world to build the best possible custodians. Not building them is not an option. Either scammers like sbf will do it, or good actors can step up and make it happen. The sooner the community stops ostracizing the idea custodians the sooner we can professionalize and clean up the custodian industry.

I honestly think it's a smart stepping stone. Getting to the center of an adoption curve takes time. Offering an existing financial model the mainstream are comfortable with and having these banks onboard newbies to familiarize them with digital currency is good. It's then MUCH easier to have that population converted to self custody. Onboarding a new concept from scratch is really difficult and expensive en masse. I remember when people were freaking out about getting into a stranger's car for Uber and they were in billion in debt for years waiting for the culture conversion to click.

I agree Hal might have been too old school, but I wouldn't put it past Michael to use this as the trojan horse for market conditioning.

I think it is an important step to be taken. However, banks on Bitcoin should not and likely will not look the way that we often assume that they will. Bitcoin's economic dynamics and technical capabilities highly incentivize full reserve banks, which would likely become the norm. In addition, those would likely be primarily for credit and loans and not as much as place for individuals to park funds, especially not spending money. Banks will be essential, but not in the way that we think.

my first cellphone had 2 lines of txt and no internet. Now I can stream live sports over mobile.

who the fuck knows what bitcoin will do 😂

Yep

Nik Bhatia's book "layered money" describes this in detail.

There's a certain type of person (and there are plenty in bitcoin) that seem to be incapable of separating what is likely to happen from what I want to happen. I see it in comments on so many SN posts. Guys, the world moves very slowly until it doesn't. No one knows how this will pan out. I think we all agree that bitcoin fixes so many things and that it can replace so many middle men. But, this will not happen over night. Being able to see what is coming is a skill we need to have. Trying to anticipate the future. Reading the room, etc.

Being able to have vision but also having principles. This is a powerful combination. Anyone can rant about what they want the world to look like. Nothing special about that at all.

Self custody is KING but for those who would rather trust a custodian, I think lightning and e-cash provides that option without the rehypothication and other noise.

Free market should decide that. I have no qualms with my local bank standing its own BTC node that they own and doing LN on them in addition to all services it already provide (fiat, cdbc, paper investment) Let people decide which they want to use. I have a feeling tho if they do that that would be zero interest in cdbc anymore. But in principle that makes sense. Heck, if Saylor's company gets "money license" (whatever that is these days) he can vouch for 158K bitcoins and get fees from LN transfers. That would definitely legitimize BTC and reach the masses when you go to your bank and they ask BTC or cdbc? You know the answer to that though, so you know it will be a hard sell for them

This is, in part, because many Bitcoin critics see it as just a Visa-like payment platform, and analyze its performance and costs by “transactions per second.” But Bitcoin is not a fintech company competing with Visa. It is a decentralized asset competing to be the new global reserve currency, aiming to inherit the role gold once had and the role the dollar holds today.

It's all about scaling. Hal mentions in his email that "Bitcoin itself cannot scale to have every single financial transaction in the world be broadcast to everyone and included in the block chain". This is the main topic. Today transactions roll up to the Banks and then they settle between themselves. Think ACH or credit cards. Lightning in a way models this. Each node in the hops between the payer and payee settle between themselves. Federated e-cash is another layer that abstracts a similar model. The key is the money. We need to get off Fiat and onto Bitcoin as the base money layer. The scaling solutions all have trade-offs, but that is very much secondary to the base money layer.

I align with the notion of transitioning towards a more decentralized financial realm, with Bitcoin spearheading this shift. It's a thrilling yet cautious journey ahead. It reminds me of a bird learning to fly, with each flap it distances itself from the known, towards the boundless sky. We're amidst a financial evolution, each viewpoint here adds a feather to the wings of this transition. It's not about agreeing on everything, but understanding the collective rhythm that could steer us to a future where financial autonomy is a norm, not a privilege.

In a world where on-chain transactions fees will reach 100$-1000$ then yes, there is no other faith for bitcoin than being hodled by custodial institutions that will allow us to transact with more bearable fee.

I think that’ll likely be the case for some of the Bitcoin but it’s estimated 50% are still owned privately