3635 sats \ 13 replies \ @Bitcoinisawesome 31 May \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
If you have ten years of purchasing power locked away in well-tended cold storage, why worry about having a weeks worth of purchasing power in an Ecash that allows you to perhaps participate in a city-wide mint that you are currently visiting? This entire post seems to imply that people, even already-bitcoiners, will be attempting to stash their entire bitcoin-net worth in this stuff which is frankly, absurd.
Additionally, it seems like the attitude here is that development and adoption of Ecash will stop or prohibit "privacy tools on top of bitcoin (or directly into Bitcoin's consensus layer) that allow us to have both privacy and self-sovereignty via self-custody" from being developed. Those tools are nowhere near losing developmental traction. Surely Ecash can exist and grow and allow people to play around with something while you simply refuse to use it yourself. I certainly won't be.
Came here to say essentially the same thing.
With ecash you still have this single greatest barrier of entry as you must backup a seed phrase or secret in order to restore your ecash tokens.
reply
This was the weakest point IMO. Backing up tokens with a seed phrase isnt required to use ecash as the digital equivalent of pocket change. You can certainly do so (in this way it's actually easier to not lose than cash/coins), but it doesn't have to be a hurdle if used responsibly. As long as the wallet isnt deleted they're fine, and if it happens by accident then maybe they learn the importance of seed phrases in a low stakes environment.
reply
If this is the way you view it, why not then just use a good self-custodial LN wallet like Phoenix or Zeus?
Users then only have the risk of lost funds on their end without risk of mint rugging (on purpose or on accident).
reply
Seth I like you and you have some good points in your post, but cmon.
Obtaining and managing a LN channel is not for everyone (I'd argue not for most people). Base chain fees won't allow for "pocket money" channels. Getting a channel presumes a decent amount of bitcoin to deploy in the first place.
Phoenix isnt available to everyone on their app store (wink). Zeus is cool but I had an unfortunate experience my first go around with them and regular people aren't gonna deal with force closes.
reply
So instead of advocating for improving Lightning or building better L2s because of bad experiences, you just give up on self-custody all together for payments?
Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater...
reply
Not at all. Trust minimized self-custody will always be the north star. I hope things like Hedgehog can enhance LN. If we get CTV in the next couple years then that opens a lot of interesting doors. Even if not, self-custody LN will continue to improve.
Ecash is just a net improvement for the custodial experience. There is a market for that, whether it is ideal or not, and I'm glad that low hanging fruit is being experimented with.
reply
I agree in principle with this take. I draw a distinction between on-chain HODL accounts with steel plates in cold storage, and hot wallets that can be used with pocket change for coffee around town. The two are not the same nor do they need to be protected exactly the same way, IMHO.
reply
Of course they don't need to be protected the same way, but we also don't have to sacrifice self-custody.
A much better middle-ground for the novice user is using Phoenix and saving the seed in a good password manager like Bitwarden. Once they get more advanced and have a good HWW they can use BIP 85 child seeds for their hot wallets and get the best of both worlds.
I see zero need to sacrifice self-custody at this point or any point for that matter.
reply
If it's not on-chain it's not self-custody.
reply
ECash is literally being pushed as a payment spec in place of Bolt11
It's anti self-custody
A privacy LARP
And bankers/spooks are buying up developer resources to peddle it
It could exist just fine and maybe have some utility if there weren't liars and scammers using it in a psyop for the edollar
Instead they use it to attack Bitcoin
reply
This entire post seems to imply that people, even already-bitcoiners, will be attempting to stash their entire bitcoin-net worth in this stuff which is frankly, absurd.
That's not implied at all, or at least not intentionally so. Most of the recommendations I see are to use ecash to onboard people to Bitcoin (even though ecash isn't even Bitcoin lol) or to use it for daily spending. That's what I'm speaking against.
Additionally, it seems like the attitude here is that development and adoption of Ecash will stop or prohibit "privacy tools on top of bitcoin (or directly into Bitcoin's consensus layer) that allow us to have both privacy and self-sovereignty via self-custody" from being developed.
Again, no, I said that it takes away some of the limited time we have to make Bitcoin itself more useful and more private. If Bitcoin cannot be self-custodied easily or used privately, you won't even be able to enter a mint if you want to down the line and instead will just be trusting mints entirely with IOUs with no ability to touch the underlying asset.
reply