Oddbean

That’s fine. I see your perspective. I personally would rather someone buy from Bull Bitcoin than Coinbase, and the friction for me of explaining that “it’s not really KYC free and let me help you install Bisq” helps no one either. In most cases, I offer to buy Bitcoin myself for friends and family, and then send it to them so that their privacy is maintained. I think that’s an even better solution than any of these exchanges, but it has a different set of trade offs. I’ll continue to be truthful myself and try to help people improve their privacy, but I do not share your passion around the KYC/not KYC distinction. More power to you.

Here’s a hill I’ll die on when it comes to onboarding new people - Wallet of Satoshi isn’t a Bitcoin Wallet. It’s a Bitcoin account, managed by a custodian, similar to a bank account. THAT lie, in my humble opinion, will cause more damage than the “no-KYC marketing” of Bull Bitcoin.

This is actually very welcomed info. So kind of similar to ZBD in a way? I love this kind of post. I do believe in calling out this type of thing. Truth can be awkward at times but it always needs to be defended.

Very similar to ZBD. I’m a Wallet of Satoshi user - they provide a great payments experience and I use a custom address to receive zaps when I’m offline. But they hold your keys. You are trusting them with your Bitcoin, and they can rug you at any time. It’s not your wallet, it’s an account which is managed by a company (WOS). I’ve seen a lot of people onboard new users with Wallet of Satoshi, and it’s very frustrating. Until you understand the risks involved with a custodian, you need to be learning the fundamentals of Bitcoin wallet management and safe seed storage. To gloss over that and pretend a custodian is a wallet is a huge mistake in my opinion. It will lead to way more rug pulls in the future.

Is there an easy wallet to onboard people to that has a lightning address without having to pay to open a channel? I think this the issue right now. We need more choices where you hold your own keys.

No. The problem hasn’t been solved from a technical perspective yet. There are other alternatives which are actual wallets, like Zeus, Phoenix, and Muun. All three have different trade offs, but users maintain custody of their funds. Zaps are fun, but the purpose of Bitcoin is not to be able to auto-receive micropayments. Bitcoin is self-sovereign, bearer, debasement-proof money. It needs to be used correctly to gain those benefits. An FTX account won’t ever be as good as an on-chain address in cold storage. Once people understand Bitcoin and have sent or received real on-chain or real lightning sats, then they can experiment with custodial payments solutions. If you start them off with Wallet of Satoshi and call it a Bitcoin wallet however, you’re building a very poor security foundation for new users. I wish they would just rebrand to “Bank of Satoshi”🤣 There’s no shame in that, and it would be much more obvious what their relationship is to their customers and their funds.

To clarify further, you can SEND zaps in a 100% self-custodial way currently. There just isn’t any reasonable way to generate new invoices and receive them automatically without using a third party payment provider. I’m confident someone will create a solution soon, and it’s more of a user experience problem than a fundamental flaw.