"We don't need scaling because almost no one wants self-custody" \ stacker news ~bitcoin

"We don't need scaling because almost no one wants self-custody"

4559 sats \ 72 comments \ @k00b 10 Sep bitcoin

zaps forwarded to @theinstagibbs (50%)

@instagibbs shared this and I'm interested in what it implies because it's easy to agree with.

I suspect the operative words are "almost no one" which implies a minority we'd quantify as near zero. We wouldn't say "we don't need privacy because almost no one wants privacy," despite privacy interested bitcoiners being a minority. Presumably, privacy interested bitcoiners are a larger minority than "almost no one" and by some consensus-significant margin.

"Almost no one" also implies a prediction. Not only does almost no one want self-custody now, but almost no one will want self-custody when:

they'll always be able to have it
they'll be able to have it more cheaply
they'll be able to have it more easily
more people they know will have it

Anyway, I found the tweet interesting. Some questions I can't answer:

Do you agree with the tweet?
At what minority size are consensus change requests dismissible?
- if not a known quantity, how about a relative one like "any size smaller then the privacy minority"
Can we deem something needless by the size the group that wants them in advance, before such wants are easy and forever possible to meet?

view all related items

558 sats \ 1 reply \ @jimmysong 10 Sep

I've said this in other places, but there's lots of room between impersonal company holding your keys and only holding coins in a cold hardware wallet.

I think that's where the sweet spot is, because instagibbs is more or less correct. People don't trust themselves with self-custody. But that doesn't mean they have to trust Coinbase. They can, for example, trust a techy relative. I know I'm that guy for my extended family because none of them are comfortable with self-custody.

What we need to do is acknowledge this reality and take advantage of it to make more scalable solutions. Something like Fedi for families or communities where there are existing trust relationships would do really well, especially if there was some strict multisig controls over the Bitcoin.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @oomahq 12 Sep

However taking responsibility of your own funds is very different than taking responsibility for someone else's. The stakes are much higher, especially if the amounts are non-trivial.

In other words I trust myself with my own self-custody, but I wouldn't ever want to be in a position where I can lose someone else's savings (people close to me that trust my judgement, to make things worse). Maybe the group of potential Uncle Jims is much smaller than the group of people who know how to self custody.

573 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 10 Sep

I don't agree with the tweet as a reason for not having scaling. If we don't have scaling it should be either because changes to Bitcoin need to meet an excruciatingly high bar and the current proposals don't meet it in the eyes of the community or scaling poses serious risk to the decentralization or security of Bitcoin. Those would be some of the viable reasons in my opinion.

Some people don't want fire insurance either because they may never need to use it but if they do need to use it they are sure glad it is there. If people don't want to self custody that is their choice but hopefully it will be there for them when they need to self custody.

211 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

This reminds me of that scene at BTC2023 when Ihotep said something similar about self-custody...

Here it is https://xcancel.com/HodlMagoo/status/1659304408117551104

693 sats \ 18 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

No I do not agree with. Is quite vague and generalize.
Sincerely, in Bitcoin is quite hard to size the consensus. I lived the blocksize war and the whole debate and shit... it was a mess, that also could end up badly.
This is linked to the previous point, the "size of the group". In the end is all about how UASF works.

In regards of self-custody... each one will have to discover it by themselves. In the end, will be like shitcoiners, leaving the shit-boat, because slowly they see that Bitcoin is better. And I always have a meme for those:

Bitcoin is not for the weak... only for the brave.

431 sats \ 3 replies \ @TomK 10 Sep

Thank You. I don't even think about thinking of ETFs or other bs. All those that I orange-pilled (all family and some friends, maybe 12 people) are hodling kyc-free in cold storage

47 sats \ 1 reply \ @oomahq 12 Sep

Good job.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @TomK 12 Sep

Thanks. Cost me at least 3 years of my life

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

You see? The "uncle Jim" scenario it works pretty well. And is nothing wrong with that if is done well.

110 sats \ 9 replies \ @BallLightning 10 Sep

If you want bitcoin as a real currency, it needs to be for the brave, for the cowards, for the strong, for the weak, for the smart, for the stupid, for the rich and for the poor.

153 sats \ 8 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

Please be my guest making these people using Bitcoin

Or these

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @BallLightning 10 Sep

I can't make anybody to use bitcoin.

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

then if you are alone with BTC in your area, is all for nothing.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @BallLightning 10 Sep

I want a future where bitcoin is used as a currency. You can't have a currency if only the best of the best use it.

110 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

Bitcoin is a natural selection, don't you get it?

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BallLightning 11 Sep

What do you mean? What percentage of the world population will die because of bitcoin?

view replies

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

@remindme in 3 years

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @IamSINGLE 10 Sep

What about the people who can't or who don't wish to learn? Do you not want to see them on the boat? I'm sure more than 90% people will never understand what you intend.

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

40 sats \ 1 reply \ @IamSINGLE 10 Sep

I'm not dismissing your ideas but I want to put my point here. Self custody is way better than custody I understand it for me. But I see people around me and if course you also have, people who for some reason can't use self custody. What about them? How can we take them in Bitcoin? There are still many many people who want easier things. The acceptance rate for easier things is higher!

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 10 Sep

How can we take them in Bitcoin?

With patience, slowly teaching them. If they will read my guides, their Bitcoin life will be much easier. If they do not want to read... there's always a short answer: HFSP. Life is a choice, chose wisely.

And for those that are rejecting from start Bitcoin I have a better answer...

305 sats \ 1 reply \ @nerd2ninja 10 Sep

Rejecting softforks on the basis of rejecting self custody is my line in the sand. Most people use custodians is a fail condition. I would rather start again from scratch than accept FIAT 2.0 Bitcoin edition

310 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 10 Sep

Exactly. Is it bitcoin without the self custody option? It's existential.

195 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 10 Sep

Yes, but only in the sense that there's a correlation between the need for scaling and the demand for self custody. I believe that a significant number of people want self custody, but I also believe that this number is small enough that the need for scaling is significantly mitigated.
In my opinion, there's no specific size at which a change request should be automatically dismissed. Change requests should be evaluated on merit, not popularity.
Once again, no. Wants are not stable over time nor are they easily predictable. So you can't determine that something is unnecessary simply because the size of the group that currently wants it is small. It's entirely possible that once an idea is implemented, people realize that they actually really like that feature that they didn't think they wanted before.

Speaking of self-custody, I believe that even just the optionality of self custody is important. I may be happy to use a custodial wallet for my day-to-day, but my option to self custody already impacts the market in significant ways and puts constraints on bad behavior of custodians.

122 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 10 Sep

Outside options are extremely valuable, even when they remain unrealized.

251 sats \ 0 replies \ @standardcrypto 10 Sep

I largely agree.

Part A

The scale at any cost agenda is largely a concern troll, for people pushing various agendas -- usually hidden, sometimes at cross purposes with each other.

"Scale now, scale at any cost" is usually connected to a claim that by the time you hit bottlenecks it will be too late to fix, because there will be a phase transition from "bitcoin mostly usable most of the time" to "hardly anyone can open new lightning channels any of the time" and it could could happen in weeks, days, hours! (The "feepocalypse" it's been called.) That's pretty much hogwash in my view, and why I largely discount these scale at any cost concern trollers.

I don't think bitcoin will never need to scale, but I think you need it when you need it, and currently there aren't serious signs of danger. When bottlenecks do appear there will be a gradual ramp up in the severity and enough time to take appropriate action.

There's no crisis, and you shouldn't listen to people who say there is one, chicken littles.

That being said, all this research going into future scaling is great -- when there's no hidden agenda. But often there is.

So read stacker news, and don't feed the concern trolls.

Part B

But what about the part about bitcoin should be able to support everyone self custodying?

OK, this I completely disagree with, for the obvious reasons. Not everyone self custodies! If you are a scale at any coster, there will always be some justification for the fork du jour.

Bitcoin somehow now supports 8 billion people on chain? Oh no, but someday there will be 80 trillion AIs and also mind downloading with state cloning, all these sentient beings will also need to be open lightning channels. It's an emergency, We Need To Take Action Now!

Everyone relax.

151 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 10 Sep

Do you agree with the tweet?

When you look at the entire world and cross off the people who've never considered this, I guess it's true. But we'd need to do some sort of survey.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Sep

I don't. I think it's easy to agree with though which is why I forced myself to think about it.

As is, self-custody is:

non-trivial
predicted to be increasingly unsustainable economically for all but the largest UTXOs

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 10 Sep

The only way to determine this was through a survey. I want to emphasize that I strongly disagree with the assertion that, simply because there is no current interest in self-custody, we can ignore the need for scaling. I was simply pointing out the fact that people aren't keen on self-custody.

71 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Sep

I believe Spiral funded such a survey last year and the author's of Resistance Money have been discussing a more recent one. I'll try to dig them up soon and see if there's an attempt to measure this.

153 sats \ 2 replies \ @cooder 11 Sep

He may have a point. One of the disappointments about the promise of bitcoin as a truly peer-to-peer money today is it wouldn't work with millions of people using it daily -- even with layers like Lightning. Of course, it's possible the tech evolves to meet that demand but it's also possible it won't. Or we have to make compromises on features like self-custody to support hundreds of millions of people.

Matt Levine has written a lot about how much of the crypto world involves reinventing the financial wheel, so to speak, and creating many of the same instruments and tools that have grown out of decades of trial and error in traditional finance but making those mistakes faster and without a safety net -- learning along the way. I sometimes wonder if bitcoin is doing a bit of this, as novel as it is, and in its awe we're blinded to some realities about why modern banking is the way it is right now. Nevermind the "fiat system" and all that, I'm talking about people who don't want to stash cash under their mattress or would rather have someone else manage their money.

221 sats \ 1 reply \ @petertodd 12 Sep

Lightning will work just fine with millions of people using it daily: https://petertodd.org/2024/covenant-dependent-layer-2-review#lightnings-scaling-limits

Getting to that point isn't even hard. We might already be reasonable close to that already.

Lightning can probably support low hundreds of millions of users with current technology.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @cooder 12 Sep

That's an interesting read, thanks. So based on the assumptions in the piece, I can see how it's technically possible. But it's still not practical.

And I think this is the heart of the discussion: just because it's technically doable doesn't mean people will want to do it that way. If all the UX improvements bitcoin needs to scale ultimately come down to "someone can spend and receive money using a password" but if you lose that password your money is all gone... most people do not want that.

111 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 10 Sep

I don't have a good answer to your questions, but they reminded me of a Minority Rule post that I never got around to writing.

Why is virtually all salt in the US (and likely many other places) kosher? The number of people who will make their purchasing decision on that factor is miniscule, but the cost of complying is sufficiently low to make it worthwhile.

Also, I think you're right to point out that not caring about custody is not static. If it becomes less costly or more beneficial, then more people will want it.

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 10 Sep

the cost of complying is sufficiently low

Perhaps this is the rub. Maybe what is easy to agree with in the tweet is that this is implied:

"almost no one" = # of people who benefit / cost of providing benefit

The number of people who benefit might be large, but the cost of providing the benefit is so much larger that it's best to treat the beneficiaries as if they don't exist.

110 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 10 Sep

I believe there’s a difference in self custody spending and self custody savings. I don’t think self custody spending will ever be something a non negligible amount of people care about. Many hardcore bitcoiners even take this position. I’ll exclude spending from this thought process.

So I think it’s more of a question about whether or not we can scale bitcoin to a decent chunk of the world (20%?) to a degree that fits their typical behavior of savings/investment transfers. For a financially savvy individual, that would probably just be one transaction a month on average. So for 20% worldwide bitcoin adoption, how many do at least one savings transfer a month today with fiat? 20% of that maybe? Very regional based I’d assume. These are very loose numbers that could be wrong but sounds okay in theory.

So can 4% of the world do one bitcoin transaction a month? I won’t do the math right now. If so, I think it’s in a good spot. If not, maybe some form of covenants can help, especially since they share some idea of eventual settlement under a temporarily shared UTXO.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Sep

This is a nice take. We all have different spending levels though so I wonder how that manifests globally.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @roadrunnah 11 Sep

Item number one: Bitcoin does not need scaling but the reasoning that he made is not something that you juxtapose into the premise.

Item Number Two: It is always dismissible in terms of using the word consensus. But we cannot apply it to people who have their opinions. The reasoning of people who want self-custody is to develop a way to avoid at all cost asset freezing or seizures.

Item Number Three: As I have already mentioned the premise is not to be juxtaposed with his narrative regarding self custody. It is just obvious that he hates self custody and he does not want the idea to spread. This is his ploy. There is consensus but you cannot force the self custody group to abdicate their position simply because someone is having a learning plateau issue with regards to self custody.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @BTCLNAT 11 Sep

"We don't need Bitcoin because almost nobody uses it"

Is there any logic to this statement?

Just because something is not used by a majority does not mean that it is not necessary. It is often related to the elements raised by @k00b:

They will always be able to have it: self-custody wallets are not always available to everyone in all places or are difficult to use in some of them.

They will be able to have it cheaper: In many cases having access to self-custody can be expensive for some. Let's think about merchants who use the Lightning network, opening a channel is not always cheap, so they use the custody option.

They will be able to have it more easily: the technical aspect of having self-custody and the improvement in security can be impediments to using it More people who know will have it: not always people have knowledge about the existence of this option.

My answers

Do you agree with the tweet? Not at all

What minority size are requests for consensus change dismissible? I have no answer.

Can we consider something unnecessary because of the size of the group that wants it in advance, before such desires are easy and always possible to satisfy? Not always. All elements must be evaluated, the ease and possibility of satisfying a desire should not be the elements of greatest weight in determining whether something is necessary or not; because many advances would not have been developed

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @kruw 10 Sep

Presumably, privacy interested bitcoiners are a larger minority than "almost no one" and by some consensus-significant margin.

Wasabi Wallet's coinjoins consume about ~0.7% of all available block space. Idk how much of the block space JoinMarket coinjoins consume, or how much Whirlpool coinjoins + their attached tx0 premix transactions once consumed.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 10 Sep

I wonder if I'm misunderstanding, but I read this tweet as we don't need to scale not we don't need self custody...

Either way, the idea of widely popular self-custody of financial assets is something of drastic change from our current paradigm.

At the moment, it may feel like few people want it or are prepared to take personal responsibility for their wealth, but I still feel pretty confident that this will change.

The focus needs to stay on exposing the value proposition of censorship resistant money. I imagine people in 1960s didn't think they'd need a personal computer, and people in the 1910s might not have thought they needed to fly across the country for a business meeting. (Also the way we probably don't think we need AI agents for every aspect of our life right now).

Maybe a better reading of the tweet is "let's not try so hard to scale because it's not clear that many people want what we are offering."

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Sep

I read this tweet as we don't need to scale not we don't need self custody

That's my reading too.

"let's not try so hard to scale because it's not clear that many people want what we are offering."

This is generous, but I'd guess it's exactly what he means.

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @didiplaywell 10 Sep

The critical virtue of self-custody and decentralization is not about if the user wants it or not, but just being always an option. If self-custody is always there yet used by none, it will never be the same as if it's not even an option, even if the end result superficially (yet deceptively) appears to be the same.

Lets say that in your city there's a bar "A" that's so good that everyone in the town goes to have their beer there exclusively. It's everyone's choice to do so. So the one who made that statement comes to this city and concludes "we don't need to be able to have more bars because truth is no one wants to go to other bar". The major of the city agrees and, since it's superficially the same, passes a bill so that now no one is allowed to go to any other bar but the "A" bar. Everyone is making that choice anyways, so there should be no problem at all... right? No one will agree, and that's why you need the possibility of having other bars to be an option, not necessarily to be used. It just has to be there, even if standing still forever.

And that's my postulate: self-custody and decentralization simply must be there, even if not used at all, ever. Their sole presence, the sole fact they can always be an option, is what disciplines everything from the bottom up, not their actual use.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 10 Sep

Bitcoin as a P2P MoE can only function where it is held in self custody. Putting Bitcoin into the custody of a third party where it cannot be used as a direct P2P MoE defeats the entire foundational purpose of Bitcoin.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @didiplaywell 10 Sep

Putting all your bitcoin does that, not some. Some centralized solutions advance much faster than bitcoin, helping bitcoin in the process, not the opposite. I can save in bitcoin in self-custody because I can spend it through a trusted third party. The mix works, it's happening.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Solomonsatoshi 10 Sep

Agree things like LN enable scaling and involve a degree of third party custody but with LN you can always convert back to the main protocol. Things like ETFs are completely different IMO and instead of enabling MoE as LN does, ETFs undermine the purpose of Bitcoin.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @didiplaywell 10 Sep

I'm not talking about ETFs but just about being able to buy your food on a daily basis. Pleb stuff. Only third party solutions make it possible for now, and that allows for faster bitcoin adoption in self-custody, not the opposite.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 10 Sep

So the idea that we may very well need self custody whether anyone wants it or not can be ignored?

286 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 10 Sep

It's an admission that the scale at all costs people can't quantify the risk/reward of their proposals.

Reality is there's no scale ceiling anywhere in sight, we can literally open more Lightning channels in a year than there are combined businesses and households on earth.

So what do scaling people want exactly? Pathos. Scaling panic generally sniffs out to left-coded cope that Bitcoin isn't more divisible, that Bitcoin must be bad money because it doesn't solve inequality.

But Bitcoin cannot be more divisible, not without a consensus hardfork to a unit other than sats. Hense the recent wave of L2 proposals are scams that appeal to Pathos: "you're a bad person who wants people to stay poor" if you dismiss it.

300 sats \ 0 replies \ @nitter 10 Sep bot

https://xcancel.com/theinstagibbs/status/1833122840108728451

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 11 Sep

You get rugged, you learn. Or you need to get rugged again.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @DesertDave 10 Sep

I think self-custody will always be there for people who want it. And Bitcoin will scale just fine, most of it being custodial, which is fine too.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 10 Sep

Self custody is the only way to invest in Bitcoin- all other forms are derivatives that deny you one of Bitcoins primary advantages as a bearer asset. Anyone who does not take self custody does not understand Bitcoin and its fundamental purpose.

That fundamental purpose has been so completely obfuscated that inane tweets such as the one you reference can be made.

But lets go back to basics- Bitcoin was created as 'A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.'

Bitcoin was created as an alternative to the legacy fiat monetary system. It was designed to enable direct payments between anyone wanting to free of censorship and intermediaries. This original intent has over time been slyly undermined by a wide range of tactics applied by the legacy fiat power brokers- bankers and governments.

Firstly the public perception of Bitcoin has been attacked via a variety of disingenuous attacks- claims it is only used by criminals, claims it is a waste of energy, claims it has no fundamental value. All these FUD claims do not stand close scrutiny but have gained widespread acceptance nevertheless.

Secondly based upon the asserted risk of money laundering KYC tracking has been imposed upon almost all Bitcoin trading platforms and even those platforms compliant with KYC requirements has often had their banking service access closed down. So a small number of CEXes have been allowed to operate strictly requiring KYC ownership tracking of Bitcoin.

Thirdly Bitcoin has almost universally been arbitrarily designated a commodity and thus liable for tax assessment upon each and every transaction- this hugely undermines the p2p payments intended purpose f the protocol and has pushed most Bitcoiners to hold Bitcoin as a Store of Value investment...and not use it as a Means of Exchange as the White Paper envisioned.

So Bitcoins use has been gradually steered away from a decentralised, censorship resistant P2P payments network to being much more used as a speculative commodity held in most cases with KYC tracking identifying the holder.

The commodification of Bitcoin is further advanced by the Spot ETFs. They remove custody of the Bitcoin into the hands of centralised fund managers. An ETF investor has no ability to use the protocol via their ETF shares except as a speculation upon the future price. An ETF investor has no custody of the Bitcoin held by the fund manager except to extract it in a fiat denominated form.

The ETFs effectively remove a growing ratio of the Bitcoin in existence from being able to be used for P2P payments.

If this progressive degrading of Bitcoins utility as a MoE continues its underlying value as an alternative to the legacy fiat monetary system is undermined.

The value of a monetary system relies heavily upon its ability to be used, as money. The USD is the strongest currency because it has massive transaction volume capacity, relatively stable value and it dominates global inter-bank payments system, SWIFT. So for international trade payments the USD is effectively required by all central banks. This huge volume capacity of the USD and its near universal acceptance, gives it value.

In contrast the acceptance of Bitcoin as a MoE is hugely restricted, if not prohibited by most banks and governments.

The Spot ETFs are not the first obstruction to Bitcoins intended purpose as a P2P MoE but they build upon a series of obstructions that have already been imposed.

The Spot ETFs could acquire a majority of all Bitcoin within 3-4 years.

If the fundamental purpose and intent of the White Paper is continually degraded, at what point does Bitcoin cease to be a valid alternative to the state imposed fiat monetary monopoly?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 10 Sep

There's some merit to the idea that the "right" amount of scaling is determined by user demand. I am very much in favor of self-custody but I can only speak for myself. I don't pretend to know what's important to other people or speak for them.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @bitalion 10 Sep

I think you are being realistic, I consider that privacy is fundamental and that self-custody is super important; but not everyone is willing to take on that responsibility. Since we were children we have been taught that the system does not care and watch over the tranquility of citizens and that is why it must know certain data about us to protect us, it is pure nonsense that many today believe and that is why they prefer to continue as they have until now. With Bitcoin it is a paradigm shift. Unfortunately not everyone will want to take the orange pill path.

120 sats \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 10 Sep

I'm gonna bring history on this! Yes, it's very true that 'almost noone' as history suggests. We can see with many other things. For ex. Internet prevailed because people got it easier to access and use as the days went by. More and more people want Bitcoin in the easier way. Not everyone would be sound in technology to do self custody. People who say that Bitcoin is only for the 'people who are willing to learn', I don't agree. If you want something for everyone than you should have something that doesn't get bias on the basis of knowledge. The easier it is to use, the more prevalent it would be. Custody does solve it. There will always be more people who do not wish to learn.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Golu 11 Sep

If you won't do scaling, you can't make it the best logistics (supply chain) of money. The world needs it anyhow.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @bature_ 12 Sep

"When there is a need to know" — Michael Saylor

Most people underestimate the fact that bitcoin is self-responsibility. There's just no alternative to this reality. The fiat system encourages people to forget about themselves and live their lives however they wish as if there are no consequences. This notion is what makes the world the mess that it is today. Bitcoin fixes the world by shifting responsibilities to the individual. Bitcoin is a total opposite of fiat. This is the reality that anyone coming into Bitcoin must be willing accept.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cageofaquarius 11 Sep

Do you agree with the tweet?

No. I do not. There is no connection between his subject and his message. Very illogical at best.

At what minority size are consensus change requests dismissible? if not a known quantity, how about a relative one like "any size smaller then the privacy minority"

If we are talking about consensus, we cannot avoid what is agreed upon unanimously. Almost everything negligible will look dismissible. But then again look at DEI.

Can we deem something needless by the size the group that wants them in advance, before such wants are easy and forever possible to meet?

The spirit of time is in favor of the minority nowadays so labelling something as needless is just resorting to generalizations.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @ninjagrandma65 11 Sep

If we do not have self custody.... what breaks? Incentive-wise, what breaks?

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b OP 11 Sep

Node runners. Mostly custodians would bother. Consensus would be left to these “banks.”

162 sats \ 2 replies \ @ninjagrandma65 11 Sep

Yeah. And if the entire point of the blocksize wars was to ensure the 'little people' keep running nodes..... houston we have a problem again.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 11 Sep

It's not a 'now' problem depending on how you look at it.

If you think custody is too hard and can be made easier through scaling, I'd argue it's a now problem. But if the concern is blockspace being super competitive, then we aren't there yet.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @ninjagrandma65 11 Sep

The cypherpunks were looking 50 years in the future. We should do the same.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rebel_nomad 11 Sep

Of course many of those who are smart enough to go for self-custody all the way also are smart enough to be quiet about it...

So that definitely distort the whole picture.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cheerioMsSophie 11 Sep

On personal experience, i disagree with instagibbs. I know no one personally in the crypto space that has no self-custody. Most of them have CEX accounts as well, but not all of them. How is your personal experience? Maybe i just live in a bubble.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @brian_sabc 10 Sep

so... what he's saying is that he's not going to work on scaling because almost no one he knows is interested in self custody.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BallLightning 10 Sep

I have no idea how bitcoin can be completely self-custodially (without ecash) scaled for the whole planet. Currently it can't even with lightning. But then again i found bitcoin in 2009 (exactly because I was searching if some kind of sdecentralized currency is possible), i played with it, even got some bitcoin for free from some tap I found, i understood the idea and then thought that this is interesting, but can't scale at all. I lost interest and I lost forever my bitcoin on some old hard drive that got formatted. And then lightning network appeared, and while it doesn't scale for the whole planet it does improve the scaling a lot. I still can't think of anything that will scale bitcoin even further but I hope I will be surprised the way i was when lightning appeared. And i don't know about these covenant posts that periodically appear. I don't think O am smart enough to see a potential problem with them, but the way these soft forks are presented periodically seem suspicious to me.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Rsync25 10 Sep

👀

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satoshi__Nakamoto 11 Sep outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.