Oddbean new post about | logout
 What's the deal with these mints? What features do they offer? How is it different from running your own LND?  
 They handle all the lightning stuff on the back end and you don't have to worry about it. You just send them your sats and they issue you a shitcoin. basically.

So you're interoperable with the lightning network through their token. It's a great UX, but of course it's custodial so they can rugpull you
and they could also print tokens that weren't backed by Sats.

so it's a bank as the OP describes.

you can use anybody's mint because on the back end they're connected to all the other LN nodes. So if you trust that nostr:nprofile1qqsw9n8heusyq0el9f99tveg7r0rhcu9tznatuekxt764m78ymqu36cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuat50phjummwv5hszymhwden5te0wahhgtn4w3ux7tn0dejj7qg4waehxw309an8yetwwvh82arcduhx7mn99uuwx66a guy, you can use his tokens.
or you and your buddies could spin up a mint. 
 It sounds like it might be good for casual users with small amounts of sats. It's an easy, low-cost way to use lightning without any of the complexities or expenses involved with running your own lightning node. I can see where it has its place in the greater community, but not much value if you already run your own node and manage your own bitcoin.  
 that's exactly what I do
10k sats on minibits for zapping and besides that I don't F with LN

I have Monero for actual purchases