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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 Jul \ parent \ on: Proton Wallet w/ Andy Yen | Opt Out Podcast bitcoin
Yeah, he did a fantastic job breaking it down in a way that finally made it make sense. Their initial comms could have been much better to prevent much of the backlash, but grateful he took this chance to clear the air a bit.
Makes me even more sad that Samourai devs are in jail as its second- and third-order effects are massive.
LOL that's a first.
Was just the theme that the artist I commissioned went, and I liked the vibe. I am, in fact, not a communist.
10 sats \ 0 replies \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
Do you think covenants will be coming any time soon?
Yes, massive and growing traction in the Bitcoin developer community around covenants + extending Bitcoin script via the Great Script Restoration or similar. Hard to give timelines but we're getting closer steadily to rough consensus.
Will they be able to in the end or will it go to the supreme court?
If Tornado Cash and Samourai cases are lost then mints are 100% a simple prosecution as they're already far "worse," legally.
And even if so, is there no way nym mints wouldn't be able to exist?
They can definitely exist, but will incentivize rug pulls, and the few good ones will be scared off after one mint op gets prosecuted. It's very, very, very hard to maintain OPSEC as a nym when a nation state wants to track you down.
And, will MSB apply to a small group using a fedimint?
Supposedly there is some grey area if its a fedimint with enough signers but not sure the specifics of that. Agreed that it would be a much harder legal sell if it's actually community custody, but no fedimints are that ATM AFAIK. If they remain very small and very niche they might just not be worth pursuing for the US gov but hard to say.
10 sats \ 0 replies \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
I've responded at length to that, many times. It's an asinine take that is dangerous and disingenuous and will lead to people hating Bitcoin because they think Bitcoin lost their money when it was really a malicious mint or a gov rug pull.
wut lol
Dude, take a step back and calm down. We don't have to both love the same custodial tools to be reasonable and actually have conversations.
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
I don't have a choice here, not sure how I can make that clearer.
I would much prefer to be able to not give up custody of a single sat.
21 sats \ 4 replies \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
No you just don't like my responses because they don't fit your narrative. As seen in your strawman reply instead of a real response.
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
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...
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
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.
34 sats \ 6 replies \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
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).
28 sats \ 1 reply \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
Do you think tether is an IOU?
Yeah, it's literally an IOU for dollars.
Even if they are, I think that talking about ecash with an altcoin model is more honest than telling people it's custodial bitcoin.
As I said, I think it's disingenuous to pretend that ecash is not custodial, as the asset people care about is Bitcoin, not the IOU on top of it. No one would accept ecash that wasn't fully redeemable for Bitcoin as then it's literally a worthless credential. That is far different than altcoins which have their own incentive structures and are far more resilient than ecash.
I'm in agreement with you that ecash is not bitcoin. But this does not mean it's a useless idea.
I don't necessarily think it's a useless idea, but that it's useless to pursue for Bitcoin payments because of the broken incentives etc. that I mentioned. All previous ecash attempts have failed because they undermine the state and are trivial to shut down, and the latest take on ecash is no different (except that it's backed by an asset that is under intense scrutiny from the US gov). The reason I push so hard against it is because it's inevitable that this either ends in users rugged and trust broken, killing ecash as an idea, or gov rugs and trust broken, killing ecash as an idea.
To me it's a concept that is technically fascinating and I want to love, but one that clearly has no future in the world we live in today. Once we overthrow our oppressors and have more just laws it's another story, and community banking via ecash would probably be a good tool in that potential future.
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.
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
Setting up a federation will eventually be as easy as setting up a WiFi router at home.
How? A useful mint/federation requires a Bitcoin node, a well-capitalized and managed Lightning node, mint software, and a multisig wallet. In what dream world does that become as easy as a plug-and-play router?
If you "own" a house
Huh? How are house mortgages comparable to ecash... Are you trying to argue that because the legacy system is broken it's OK if Bitcoin is broken?
Make sure to check the social backup in Fedi app.
Haven't seen that, will have to check it out!
There's an incentive for the users to use ecash, especially Federated.
Why would WoS users suddenly be OK with dealing with custodying their ecash IOUs when the whole point of WoS to them right now is none of the personal responsibility being necessary?
You only mention users, while the whole point is custodians have to choose to implement this stuff. Why would they?
79 sats \ 0 replies \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
lol
18 sats \ 15 replies \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
You are trading btc for xmr.
The difference here is that Monero is it's own, stand-alone currency with powerful privacy features. It's not an IOU for anything, it has all of it's own properties. BTC <-> XMR is a currency exchange, while depositing Bitcoin at a mint to get ecash is being given an IOU that is worthless if the underlying Bitcoin disappears.
Who will take ecash from a mint that has no Bitcoin to back it? As opposed to Monero, where it has it's own direct value and has thousands of merchants and users directly accepting it.
Ecash is not a "coin" it's an IOU. Those are wildly different things and are not comparable.
US MSB arguments will quickly apply to almost all jurisdictions, as they already do. FinCEN and FATF reach is far beyond US borders.
you’re saying eCash would replace on-chain coins
Most are positing that this is how people should be spending their Bitcoin. I see no need for custodial solutions at this point, especially when there are major UX improvements to be had with simple soft-forks like covenants via CTV or LNHANCE.
40 sats \ 1 reply \ @sethforprivacy OP 31 May \ parent \ on: Summarizing my thoughts on ecash bitcoin
Why are custodial solutions necessary at all?
Why isn't Zeus or Phoenix sufficient?
No one pays me to write these things.
This isn't an attack on Cashu, but a summary of my issues with ecash generally (that includes fedimints etc.).
Do you have a better idea to improve custodial lightning solutions?
Yes, don't use them :)
Why are you not working on the protocol to improve it?
Covenants would make Lightning for more user-friendly and enable better L2s, so that would be an ideal starting place.