More-or-less true with Cashu, but not necessarily true with Fedi.  Fedi explicitly has the gateway as a separate entity (which AFAIU can be run by a separate group), rather than Cashu’s stance that’s more like making the gateway a core part of the mint.

The Mint holding the sats for you. As long as the mint is active, you can pay any lighting invoice with your ecash wallet. 

NicoB

This requires a gateway to accept your tokens.

MarsIronPI

bitcoin

Why can't you buy ecash from a Cashu mint?

Scoresby

"But I cannot turn the tokens into sats unless I convince someone to trade with me (my ecash tokens for their sats)."

you can just create a lightning invoice and pay yourself 

