IMO, the biggest mistake of all #Bitcoin/#Lightning wallet and app developers right now is not integrating the most naive version of a #Nostr based contact list.

Literally we have everything we need to easily select and send bitcoin to people, projects, clients, etc and establish very simple web of trust security. AND to have a #Nostr identity created within a wallet by default for those that don't have one, even in the absence of caring about social posts or notes or whatever.

As I learned very recently, npubs are literally taproot addresses, so legit every bitcoin wallet could generate a nostr ID for those that don't have one and if you punched in your nsec into the app, anyone could receive coins straight to their npub by the app merely auto-removing "npub..." and replacing it with "bc..."

This is SUPER low hanging fruit that completely shifts the user experience of bitcoin and I think extremely few people have realized just how big of an improvement this would be.

My advice: Stop thinking about #Nostr purely as a twitter replacement, think about it as a #Bitcoin account, username, & reputation system, it actually works and scales BETTER for that use than for general purpose social media.


This blind spot is because lightning isn't Layer 2... Nostr is.

nostr:nevent1qqsyu4pw4lwm9wr6vkweuz09jhuzlqjsstxfnhcdm60tke63pz6j5dqpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtczyzu7we2xhgry2mknq8v7227yn7jguu9xhu3g90n6rtnjj3mpyq3acqcyqqqqqqg5jdwrm


^ t-y Guy


Onward 🫡

Onward 🫡


using nostr private keys to custody bitcoin is probably the most reckless thing you can possible do knowing how people treat their private keys

without safe secs keep the nsec away from your corn


Your Witness program hex is literally the nostr pubkey, this would be sooper easy to implement.


I agree. I'm not saying you would do that. I'm saying you could:
1. Generate an nsec from your bitcoin private keys
2. SEND to any nsec if you wanted to. (the receiver would be highly encouraged to send to a real bitcoin wallet after receiving if someone sent them something)

#2 is basically moot if #Nostr contacts are integrated into wallets, because you can have the clients communicate to get payment details if desired.

I'm not suggesting to advise people to generate a #nostr ID and then use that as their bitcoin wallet keys. I'm just explaining that the standards are exactly the same and the UX could be vastly simpler than we currently have it across the ecosystem by thinking about it this way.


I disagree. The average user is going to have very little actual funds in this sort of wallet. It’s essentially equivalent to an actual physical wallet. You might keep a couple hundred dollars and understand the risks of losing it. Keeping your life savings in this sort of account anyhow. This is for small payments and simple and simple things.


I wish more folks would focus on making a better looking UX for these wallets, like Muun or Aqua and move a lot of things to the background. Build for where we’re at now and make onboarding newbies easier to use so that people WANT to use bitcoin instead of venmo or cashapp.


i'm interested for small payments. more choices the better until market forces


Great post 👍

Great post 👍


There is absolutely a point to made about the risk of using a Nostr key for real money, but then when the alternative is to use a custodian, I think the argument is basically moot. It's obviously better to have self-custody of a small amount of funds and an alternative way to communicate and pay each other where you hold your own keys than not, regardless of the trade offs or risk. Everything has risk.


This is for the user to decide. You cannot demand that everyone make the same decision about the trade off of privacy vs self-custody simply because you have a preference. There are very real trade offs with the options you present, the worst thing for UX is to presuppose what trade offs the user wants and centralizing risk into one design for everyone despite the very different needs.

It's about teaching the difference between these risks and letting people choose, not choosing for them, imo.


Great post🌅

Great post🌅


So does this work in reverse? Can I use my Bitcoin address as an npub?


hmm, if its a taproot address i don't see why not. Although you'd have to get the individual private key (rather than the master seed) for it to get your nsec. 🧐


Just tried that. Replace npub with bc and no wallet found…


Just tried with your npub as well. Replacing the npub with bc. No results.


Hmm your right it isn't a valid address when i replace it, but it was being discussed that it was based on the same standard and that there was a valid taproot address in some way with some minor modification.

I may just have the specifics wrong. I'll try to find the post about it. It was really recent because I was surprised. I hadn't known this piece of info.


Ok finally found it and it doesn't seem as simple as was explained. They are the same standard, but it isn't hashed to the same size, which just looking at it should've triggered to me that it was longer than a normal address just by character count. However it does seem to be the case that you can generate taproot addresses from the nsec and/or use your bitcoin wallet to also generate a Nostr ID with relative ease. But the degree of connection i posted above doesn't seem to check out in practice.

Post that was suggesting the beginning could just be swapped, when it seems like it needs to be hashed differently, but the rest of the description of it seems to be correct:
nostr:note1jefn0r50q3rzkqgpd8jxph2lpc5c23mthyv2njdn57lg9j4qlkksz7hmqz

A post discussing the differences and how to generate addresses or npubs from each other:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5473719.0


That’s what Proton Wallet is doing


Yeah. If that were as clean cut as initially thought. That would be incredible! Even the ability to take an existing wallet and somehow convert that to an npub would be incredible so that organizations and institutions that had a wallet could have a public identity and you could verify the wallet with the identity or vice versa.


Yes, I over simplified, apologies.  You need a checksum too.  Though I dont even think the checksum is used.


IMO, the biggest mistake of all #Bitcoin/#Lightning wallet and app developers right now is not integrating the most naive version of a #Nostr based contact list.

Literally we have everything we need to easily select and send bitcoin to people, projects, clients, etc and establish very simple web of trust security. AND to have a #Nostr identity created within a wallet by default for those that don't have one, even in the absence of caring about social posts or notes or whatever.

As I learned very recently, npubs are literally taproot addresses, so legit every bitcoin wallet could generate a nostr ID for those that don't have one and if you punched in your nsec into the app, anyone could receive coins straight to their npub by the app merely auto-removing "npub..." and replacing it with "bc..."

This is SUPER low hanging fruit that completely shifts the user experience of bitcoin and I think extremely few people have realized just how big of an improvement this would be.

My advice: Stop thinking about #Nostr purely as a twitter replacement, think about it as a #Bitcoin account, username, & reputation system, it actually works and scales BETTER for that use than for general purpose social media.


Onward 🫡

Onward 🫡