Is Liquid Bitcoin real Bitcoin? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Is Liquid Bitcoin real Bitcoin?

1162 sats \ 30 comments \ @criptopanas 24 Jan bitcoin

Recently I see a lot of Bitcoiner talking about Liquid, but is L-BTC really Bitcoin?

Yes22.2%

NO77.8%

63 votes \ poll ended

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267 sats \ 1 reply \ @nerd2ninja 24 Jan

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @justBrian 24 Jan

🤣🤣🤣

186 sats \ 0 replies \ @eduardopro 24 Jan

As the name suggests, BTC and L-BTC are two separate things.

330 sats \ 6 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 24 Jan

L-BTC is Bitcoin, so is LN sats, so is cashu ecash, so are custodial LN sats, so are sats in a fedimint. All have different security models. All still Bitcoin.

This isn’t a position of a maxi to deny use cases for sats. It is a position of technical ignorance. Many bitcoiners are not technically minded, and easily fall of propaganda and talking points. It’s sats. Not ether, not sol, not a stable. It’s Bitcoin damn it!

A sat is a sat, no matter of it is sleeping in a utxo, locked behind multisig, part of a federation, or in other newer encodings.

Stop being technically ignorant

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 5 Apr

Bingo

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @joda 24 Jan

If the United States decided to print dollars they "guaranteed" were "backed by Bitcoin", would you call that cash "Bitcoin?"

What if they showed cryptographic proof of 1 Sat backing every dollar?

Could you imagine any possible problem with this?

21 sats \ 3 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 24 Jan

No, of course not. I would call it Bitcoin backed dollars. The issue is the 1:1 nature. L-BTC doesn’t back Bitcoin, or vía versa. LN sats don’t back Bitcoin. They ARE Bitcoin.

If they started printing banknotes denominated in Bitcoin, those notes would be “Bitcoin”. Yes the public would demand proof the physical notes are backed by utxos. Trivial to do this with cryptographic singnatures.

I see no issue or inconsistency with my position.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @joda 24 Jan

Thanks for the reply. I'm still learning about liquid and my opinion is my no means set in stone.

So is there no way for an entity or group of entities to stop a transaction from taking place in Liquid? What happens with catastrophic network failure? Does a HTLC expire which reverts the L-btc funds to an on-chain utxo controlled by the owner of the L-btc?

30 sats \ 1 reply \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 25 Jan

Liquid is a nakamoto-software fork of Bitcoin/bitcoin-qt that uses a special zero knowledge proof version of the main cryptography library: https://github.com/BlockstreamResearch/secp256k1-zkp

This library enables confidential transactions (using a similar confidential transaction structure that monero used in 2015. Blockstream is experimenting with newer zkps like Bulletproofs++ https://blog.blockstream.com/bulletproofs-a-step-towards-fully-anonymous-transactions-with-multiple-asset-types/). It does not behave like LN with HTLC's, although it has expressive enough transactions that you could run LN on Liquid. There is work being done here at the moment, and maybe we will be LN L-BTC for ultracheap and more performant LN txs.

One way to think of it is a place to trial newer cryptosystems within Bitcoin ecosystem without putting the main chain at risk. it is a Bitcoin sidechain, a layer 2 chain. The blocks are generated at a rate of 1 per minute, and "Liquid’s federated model requires blocks to be signed by at least two-thirds of all block signers". The block time variance is also much much smaller than Bitcoin. It is highly reliable. Otherwise it behaves just like Bitcoin Core. To move your Bitcoin coin from liquid to mainnet, you issue a Pegout tx.

They are incentivized to confirm your transaction through fees, just like in mainnet. Yes, there is a risk that the Federation blocks your peg-in or out. This is much more difficult given the constituents of the Federation, their philosophy and operation within Liquid. Its a different security model, but it has its advantages. I trust the Liquid federation to have the best intentions for Bitcoin over Udi and his merry band of vandals and rogue miners.

The biggest valid maxi critisism I can accept is that it allows issuing of Confidential Assets (shitcoins?). But i think there is lots of room for experimentation of various assets to increase Bitcoin and satoshi standard adoption. Confidential Assets is something that only exists in liquid and that SCRT cosmos sidechain. Would you not rather this be done with Bitcoin technologies, rather than cosmos?

Compare and contrast this with "Optimism, Arbitrium, Base" sidechains or "ETH L2" in which ETH is locked in contracts on ETH mainnet, and 1:1 ETH is issued on the sidechain.

To contrast with "Bitcoin only exists in Bitcoin Core" "maxi" position -- the ETH maximalist still believes that Optimism ETH or Base ETH is ETH! And they are correct (at least about taxonomies and what is ETH)! Ok so maybe we think of this as a derivative of Bitcoin -- contrast with 'Liquid Staked Derivatives' -- its somewhere between a onchain utxo and a 'staked derivative'. I think its easier to consider it all different flavors of Bitcoin.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @joda 25 Jan

THANKS for the detail. I'm not opposed to its existence and use. It can even, and appropriately, use "BTC" in the name "L-BTC". Pegged one-to-one, I can see the validity of calling it a sidechain rather than a shitcoin. And development of such kind within the Bitcoin ecosystem is better (for Bitcoin) than it being built elsewhere.

But I still see that a government can mandate (or a situation may dictate) members of this federation to behave in a certain way. And even if the transactions are private, the fact is that it seems possible for transactions to get locked and for users to be "stuck" in the chain without being able to peg-out. With On-chain, you can run your own node and miner if you wish, and no one can stop a transaction from being included in a block.

As others have said, it has its uses. I don't see myself using it, but I'm open to learning more.

Also, I think with many of these technologies (even more so with chaumian mints), we may get blindsided by legal or regulatory issues. Bitcoin being the only real commodity (I have no idea how Eth is being considered to have that status), issuances of rights-to contracts ("money") and such are not the same as those for securities-- so much of the ado in the crypto space is a red herring in regards to how Bitcoin will be regulated.

169 sats \ 5 replies \ @peacemaker9964 24 Jan

52 sats \ 0 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 24 Jan

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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @mx12art 25 Jan

VJLKEJnR27Xgj8y5jLckpEqYMZLzcpUc3SmmeLqBYq6iuHp3frrRWqhcoN5me91t7h6BtDmYKXtk3KPP

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyberpunk02 24 Jan

VJLCbGKnZg6YJa41pvQHytocEHTzxWXc7BCHJDazGjApcmfSnsz94k9N5XkvTwcVWHcXPAEBRCJ3unhN

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BountifulB 24 Jan

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Longtermwizard 24 Jan

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96 sats \ 0 replies \ @JuanMiguel 24 Jan

It's not real Bitcoin. Never was, never will be.

23 sats \ 0 replies \ @faradayfedora 24 Jan

It's not Bitcoin but it has value and can be useful.

32 sats \ 0 replies \ @Krv 24 Jan

Liquid is a mechanism / tool for taking real bitcoin to enable features that are unavailable on the Bitcoin main chain via taking custodial tradeoffs (although still very low risk).

It has different uses cases. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop people from criticizing it based on Bitcoin's use case.

31 sats \ 2 replies \ @Krv 24 Jan

You cannot put a complicated idea into a binary.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @joda 24 Jan

So you're saying one definitely cannot do that?

52 sats \ 0 replies \ @Krv 24 Jan

Well, one can do whatever they want, but it's not going adequately encompass the reality.

22 sats \ 1 reply \ @mx12art 24 Jan

It's kind of like Bitcoin, each positive thing you get has trade-offs, and that's normal. It's part of Bitcoin.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @cyberpunk02 24 Jan

Yeah obviously there is overlap. . Dudes don’t even understand words are fuzzy

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @turker 24 Jan

For me, L-BTC is as much related to BTC as STX is to BTC. 😁😁😁

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @joda 24 Jan

L-BTC is a contractual claim to real Bitcoin, with that contract being created and guaranteed by a federated custodial institution. If you had a certificate for gold "guaranteed" to be redeemable for gold, you would not call it "gold".

Lightning is a contractual claim to real Bitcoin, with that contract being created and guaranteed by CODE, on the blockchain. But it is a huge pain in the ass, so most people prefer custodial wallets.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @ZezzebbulTheMysterious 25 Jan

Liquid behaves here the same as Lightning, the smart contract in both is created and guaranteed by code on the blockchain. In both cases its multisig UTXO. Pegout and close channel are similar operations, but LN allows a state update. There are no channels or timeouts in Liquid, its just L-BTC UTXOs. Individual LN transactions are not recorded for all eternity (just open/close/anchor). On liquid, they exist in an obscured form that does not reveal values, just the transaction graph.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 24 Jan

Its a real tough call.

Strictly speaking I would say no, its a claim on BTC - but the same goes for LN

In both cases, the "BTC" has been locked in a multisig and you are using an facsimile representation of that.

(Side track: But I think the fears of Liquid Federation not allowing Peg-Out are reasonable but overblown...as I can think of ways to bypass their ability to do that... remember that Liquid is Confidential Transactions by default so no one can tell what you're holding or what your transferring....even more, if they prevent direct peg-out you could always just transfer the L-BTC to an exchange and sell it for BTC....)

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinErrorLog 25 Jan

No, L-BTC is a shitcoin that the Liquid Federation promises to redeem for BTC.

This may still solve some problems for some people, but it doesn't scale Bitcoin really.

The ultimate risk is that if Liquid becomes popular, the government will shut it down.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Neo 25 Jan

No.