Look at this sh*t somebody tried to sell me as a scaling solution for Bitcoin
1294 sats \ 55 comments \ @pako 21 Apr bitcoin
So I was on X/Twitter rambling about the high fee environment we are right now, people are interesting solutions such as Mercury Layer which will launch next month, Robin Linus just proposed this thing called zkCoins that according to could raise Bitcoin's throughput from 7 to 100 TPS without while also enabling covenants without the need for a soft fork, somebody said that Supertestnest's Hedgehog could be a great addition to Lightning, even Drivechains came into the discussion, now after all of this somebody proposed to use wrapped Bitcoin, and you just need to read how the thing is structure to know it's a complete scam:
  • Coins are "bridged" by sending them to a multisig.
  • A federation owns and controls the multisig.
  • Nobody knows who the signers are.
  • Users can't withdraw their Bitcoin unless they get the federations permission to do so.
  • It uses its own "Blockchain technology".
  • Completeley centralized development team.
  • Their Blockchain can do, at max, 10 TPS, just ~45% more than Bitcoin.
  • According to the owners, they have partnered with multiple exchanges but the only one that has enabled their wrapped Bitcoin so far is Bitfinex, which we all know are the guys behind Tether.
  • Native support for Tether's unbacked dollar certificates and other shitcoins in their Blockchain.
The only good thing these guys get going for them is that in difference to Stacks (STX) and other wrapped Bitcoins is that they don't have a "Governance token", which absolves them from shitcoinery a little.
Here you have the project's homepage and their whitepaper, take a look at them.
The project is called "Liquid" and they claim they will be "The backbone of the global financial system of the future." but looks like nobody is using it.
Stop shilling this shit as a scaling solution for Bitcoin while it is just a WBTC but made by a company owned by a guy some people still suspect "He could be Satoshi" when he clearly is not.
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30 sats \ 4 replies \ @TheBTCManual 22 Apr
Lol stop shilling liquid, whats the alternative...crickets!
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @pako OP 22 Apr
Alternatives to Liquid: Stacks, Rootstock, Wrapped BTC, Core DAO (Pomp's new shilled yield product), any other product who offers "a Bitcoin bridge" from absolutely any Blockchain.
They all offer the same level of trustlessness and they all let the user hold their own keys, the user owns the bitcoin there as much as they own the videogames on their Steam library.
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30 sats \ 2 replies \ @TheBTCManual 22 Apr
So what are people meant to use if they are priced out of the basechain?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @pako OP 22 Apr
That's a question you should ask yourself.
But clearly, these products are not Layer 2, which is the scope of this post.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @TheBTCManual 22 Apr
Lol I am asking you since you're the one bringing the topic up
No exchanges, no ETF, no multi-sig side chains, No fedimint since thats also custodian
Mercury, who is running your server? WHOOOO?
If you're going to critique fine, but if you don't offer up a solution whats the point of debating, then its just twitter like engagement farming
I would love a more robust option, but what? Trust mimimisation is a hard ass problem to solve, the base chain is evident of that
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @john_doe 22 Apr
About exchanges, your point is not correct. There are multiple exchanges providing L-BTC, among them BTSE, Sideswap, now Aqua and others I never used. Lightning provides support for stable coins, not sure what is the problem with that.
That being said a nice benefit of Liquid is that it is available now, we can store L-BTCs with a hardware wallet, and by swapping through boltz we can pay with Lightning by gradually withdrawing with our hardware wallet (currently Jade or Ledger nano S are supported).
Will transaction fees on Liquid be forever low if its use increase? No.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pako OP 22 Apr
among them BTSE, Sideswap, now Aqua
Never in my life had I heard about the first 2, Aqua is not an exchange, it's a wallet, still you can see that Liquid's blocks are completely empty most of the time.
we can store L-BTCs with a hardware wallet
You can also store, RBTC, WBTC, renBTC, BTCB, BTC.b, etc with a hardware wallet, what's the advantage to those things?
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20 sats \ 2 replies \ @btc_remnant 22 Apr
Hey @pako!
I think you're maybe in a stage like mine (I don't know if you saw my 2 posts here).
"I love Bitcoin, but I hate bitcoiners" is what I say lately. I cannot believe we have to witness what we're witnessing. We've passed from saying that Monero is a shitcoin, to saying that the future of Bitcoin scaling is using a token that a guy minted in his basement with his raspberry, and that it needs to be integrated in every wallet. Now you only need to wait for the guy to have a broken SD card, or in the bigger cases, the FEDs to raid his home and take all the electronics. Boom! Money lost. So much for scaling Bitcoin!
I've never used Monero up to today, but I will use it before using eCash tokens or Fedi. That's for sure!
I think in the end, most bitcoiners are here not because of the freedom (the cypherpunk way), but because of the NgU. You only have to see big OGs shilling ETFs, Microstrategy stock, or "$1M before end of year". It's so frustrating, and makes you think if people proposing other advanced scaling solutions are wrong, or we're wrong because we've been following the wrong people... right?
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @pako OP 22 Apr
Spot on!
It's pretty frustrating, I've seen groups of idiots on the internet before, the closes to these people were the GNU fanatics back in 2009, but at least those dogmatic idiots knew what they were talking about when it came to privacy and privative software.
Now, a faction of Bitcoiners have become a suicide cult whose only god is NgU, and it doesn't matter how ugly it gets, NgU es the only thing that matters, thsat's why they follow idiots like Saifedean and Saylor telling them that not using Bitcoin is a usecase and that they should take their money with them to the grave.
It's furstrating to see that they are all calling Vlad a paid enemy of Bitcoin because he is doing a great job a dismantling the narrative and interviewing dissidents, they are trying to cancel Ray because he said "Maybe Roger was right" when he realized that P2P Bitcoin is dying, and the worst part is that now they are justifying Saylor's "MoE is a distraction" and even justifying that he didn't allow one of the ETFs to donate Bitcoin open source development with the most stupid excuses I've ever heard in my life, I would rather have them say "Yes, we are all midwits who have no idea what they are all talking about, and we all think that The Bitcoin Standard is the best book ever written, so it's NgU over everything, fuck the cypherpunk ethos".
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @btc_remnant 22 Apr
Yeah, you can only say "MoE is a distraction" if you only use Bitcoin like "just another asset, which is a very good asset because it's designed for NgU". And we have one here in Spain saying the same in YT channels, conferences and TVs...
Bitcoin can only give you freedom if you're able to use it without permission, and when cash is banned. So you MUST be able to SPEND it. If the distopic situation happens, and all the on/off-ramps are closed, wtf are you going to do with your "asset", even if you have it in a cold wallet? What are you going to do with your "asset" when they tell you "500 grams maximum meat a month per person"?. "You can always move to another country where Bitcoin is not forbidden". Yeah, but people cannot fucking move when they want. We have families, we have jobs, we have friends. I don't want to move to the other side of the world with my "asset" to be able to feed my children...
I agree here with Gregg Foss: this is not about me getting rich. I could have that if BTC does a x20 again... This is about our children. I want to die peacefully knowing that there is a new world of freedom, and that my children will have a good life, irrespective of who is ruling the country. By the way, Saylor does not have children, and I think the same is true for our national Saylor...
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21 sats \ 2 replies \ @GregAsks 22 Apr
Liquid is a shitcoin, I say that many times before:
https://stacker.news/GregAsks/all
I hate that YouTubers like Ben (BTC Sessions) or Nico (Simply Bitcoin) and others promote this centralize scam. Or they just want to be the next "bitboy crypto"?
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353 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 22 Apr
Because Blockstream is paying to do so.
Liquid is not a L2... is a sidechain. Liquid was a good intention long time ago. It was coming up early in the block size wars as a proposal for exchanges, to have some kind of interoperable network to move funds between them, faster and cheaper than BTC onchain, but still using BTC. I kinda agree with that use case. A federation that is moving funds privately between them.
But then LN was launched and come in force and Liquid kinda lost the use case. The block size war was also over, segwit in place and onchain mempool liberated, so even the exchanges that were excited about Liquid, they were still preferring to do it over onchain as usual.
LN got more and more grip and Liquid was slowly forgotten and became useless. Now Blockstream, want to push people into using it as it would be a "cheapest and fastest" way instead of LN, because they do not want to see it terminated (as nobody is using it). In the end they put a lot of effort and money to build it.
IMHO they should go back to the original idea to be used for private entities and not pushed to large masses of users.
Now all those onchain maxis want to use Liquid instead of preparing in time, with calm new LN channels. That's why this crazy mania with Liquid. But as usual when the onchain fees are going down, Liquid use is going to meaningless until zero.
A Liquid TLDR:
The only use case today, for Liquid is that shitcoin ordinals people will move their shit onto Liquid.
What IF.... Blockstream is in fact the hidden funding source for all this crap with ordinals, in order to push more bitcoiners to use Liquid?
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1 sat \ 0 replies \ @pako OP 22 Apr
I don't believe in conspiracies nor want to follow any, but it's pretty clear the Blockstream are not the good guys as many Laser Eye ultramaxi cucks want to believe, they can't see it because they can only see narratives, not facts.
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21 sats \ 9 replies \ @Bell_curve 21 Apr
Are you familiar with boltz?
People use liquid to re-balance their lightning channels
Who invented proof of work? Have you read the white paper from October 31, 2008?
Look at the footnotes and bibliography for the white paper
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10 sats \ 8 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
Yes, I'm familiar with Boltz, I love their product and the guys behind it are pretty awesome. But that's not the scope of this post, I'm not talking about usability but trustlessness.
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21 sats \ 7 replies \ @Bell_curve 21 Apr
Boltz uses liquid for swaps
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10 sats \ 6 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
That's not enough to call it scaling solution.
I wouldn't have my money in it for more than 24 hours, and pf course it's not "The backbone of the global financial system of the future."
About the proof of work thing, you can look at all the other references made in the whitepaper and suspect that any of those people are Satoshi as well.
Satoshi made an incredible trustless thing on his own with all the available tools he had at the moment, Adam couldn't make something that scaled Bitcoin trustlessly with millions of dollars and a team of engineers.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Bell_curve 21 Apr
I’m not saying Adam invented bitcoin.
I’m saying he invented proof of work which Satoshi incorporated.
Have you seen the email correspondence between Adam and Satoshi?
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
Yes, I have, I've been obsessed with Bitcoin as much as any other bitcoiner for years, but I'm failing to understand what does it have to do with anything.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Bell_curve 21 Apr
You’re the one who wrote Adam is not Satoshi.
You brought it up.
I never said Adam invented bitcoin
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
Because it is one thing that people use to justify Liquid as an "L2" as if being "ethical" was some kind of silver bullet that will justify all technical shortcomings and bogus claims.
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9 sats \ 10 replies \ @Bell_curve 21 Apr
Adam has unequivocally stated he is not the inventor of bitcoin.
Why does that not satisfy you???
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0 sats \ 9 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
Not the point. I think I wasn't clear enough there. People use the "Adam is Satoshi" argument as an excuse to simp him, so he must be am"one of the good ones", "one of us", but if you read Liquid's whitepaper and Liquid's homepage it's pretty much clear that his company doesn't wat you to use your Bitcoin, they want your to use their Bitcoin while selling you the dream of ownership on their property.
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42 sats \ 8 replies \ @Bell_curve 22 Apr
Not true regarding Blockstream or Adam Back
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0 sats \ 7 replies \ @pako OP 22 Apr
What's not true about what I said?
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @Bell_curve 22 Apr
You seem to have a personal beef with Adam Back and Blockstream. Almost seem jealous of his success and relative fame
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @pako OP 22 Apr
Lol what?
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Bell_curve 22 Apr
Your rant seems driven by Blockstream hate more than a philosophical point about liquid
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10 sats \ 3 replies \ @pako OP 23 Apr
So that's it, non of my points are valid and I'm just jealous.
No wonder why Bitcoiners are becoming the laughingstock of the internet...
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52 sats \ 6 replies \ @freetx 21 Apr
Users can't withdraw their Bitcoin unless they get the federations permission to do so.
Thats technically true, but its not the only way to exit the federation. You can use things like Boltz and Sideswap (which are 3rd party processors) to exit.
Additionally you can use things like CEXs to exit.
Lastly, Liquid has been in operation for 8 years with no censorship issues, so I think that matters.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
You can do the same (except for Boltz swaps) with any other centralized shitcoin, what's the difference with Liquid and them? Blockstream being more trustworthy than shitcoin companies? That's not enough for me, I don't want to have to trust them at all.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 21 Apr
Good thing is that you're not forced to use Liquid, so you can safely totally ignore it.
It will be good once Ark/Mercury get released and battle-tested. However even there you should be cognizant that these are not purely "trustless" solutions either.
For that matter, even in LN there are still trust issues - if you are not always online or hiring a watchtower your funds can be theoretically be stolen. Moreover you can also wind up without the ability to exit because of economic/fee reasons.
Again its all a series of tradeoffs.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Bell_curve 22 Apr
Looks like nobody is using Liquid
Sound familiar? Read your post , last paragraph
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @pako OP 22 Apr
Check Liquid's mempool yourself, there's isn't harder evidence than that.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 22 Apr
👏👏👏
You clearly have a personal vendetta against Liquid
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pako OP 22 Apr
I don't wanna see people falling for it, we will lose another BTC epoch bikesheding and developing non-solutions if people start falling for the narrative that Liquid is a Layer 2 when it clearly isn't.
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10 sats \ 10 replies \ @freetx 21 Apr
Liquid exist along a spectrum of trust. Less than LN but greater than Fedimints/Cashu etc.
The best way to use it is as a "staging area" to get into LN
Least RiskGreatest Risk
BTCLNArk/MercuryLiquidFedimintseCashBitcoin Bank/CEX
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10 sats \ 9 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
It doesn't comply to my list of considerations to be a Layer 2:
  • No individual, organization, or group of individuals and/or organizations (a.k.a federation) custodying user's funds.
  • Unilateral exit.
So Liquid isn't a Layer 2 in my book, it's just WBTC with its own blockchain.
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10 sats \ 8 replies \ @freetx 21 Apr
Every solution is just various trade-offs, you just need to pick the ones that minimize your risk and maximize your benefit appropriately.
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10 sats \ 7 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
That's a non answer to the problem if you ask me.
What makes Liquid any different to Stacks WBTC, Polygon, Loopring, etc... Other than not having a governance token and/or running on Ethereum?
Everyone has been shiting on those things for years.
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20 sats \ 3 replies \ @freetx 21 Apr
I don't know anything about those Eth-style solutions so I can't really comment. But you say "other than not having a governance token" as if thats some small thing.
Liquid BTC (L-BTC) only exist when BTC is locked into the multisig. Its auditable that the same amount of BTC in multisig = same amount of L-BTC in existence.
Your practical options at this point in time are:
  • Mainchain
  • LN
  • Liquid
  • WBTC / etc
  • CEX
Thats all you have to choose from at the moment. Pick the thing you feel minimizes your risk and maximizes your benefit.
Personally, I think the list of Liquid members represents some of the most pro-bitcoin groups out there. The vast majority of those members are bitcoin only players...personally I trust them more than I trust WBTC / etc / whatever.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
Still doesn't solve the problem.
The problem is not "how much you can trust Liquid and its federation", the problem is that trust is not a scaling solution for a trustless system.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 21 Apr
Still doesn't solve the problem.
Then your only solution is to wait for fees to fall or use a CEX.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
Again, not the scope of the post, that's not the problem at hand here.
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Bell_curve 22 Apr
Refusing to acknowledge trade offs is utopian and immature and petulant
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @pako OP 22 Apr
Wait, so well call the others "shitcoins" and "Peak FIAT" for years and now, Liquid, which has the exact same properties is just "a series of tradeoff"? What absolves them from being a shitcoin and "Peak FIAT"?
Has the community become this stupid or am I taking crazy pills?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 22 Apr
Crazy pills
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 21 Apr
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @MiddleWay 21 Apr freebie
Why not mention Lightning as THE L2 scaling solution, which was launched a while ago and works fine? And if you run a lightning node, the most important problem to solve is rebalancing channels. Liquid can help with that, as a temporary asset to pass around. Read this: https://medium.com/@goryachev/liquid-rebalancing-of-lightning-channels-2dadf4b2397a
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pako OP 21 Apr
I think you didn't understand the scope of the post at all. I'm not bitching about Lightning or saying that Liquid isn't a good tool to rebalance.
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