Ecash mints are programs for running a mini central bank where people can deposit bitcoin, redeem it whenever they want, and in the meantime they get fast and cheap transactions with other users of that mint. They are pretty neat, especislly their privacy properties, but they come with most of the tradeoffs of custodial systems: the mint can steal anyone's money whenever they feel like it and can dmstart KYC'ing its users at any moment
I argue it's worse than non anon other custodial systems.
I can look up the CEO of wallet of satoshi, strike, or speedwallet and sue him, Punch him in the nose, or end his bloodline depending on the amount of sats.
Democratization of central banks 😀
Ecash improves custodial services, but it doesn't make them no-custodial.
🫂
My claim to underlying bitcoin is a bearer asset of sorts, and that's about it
Run your own mint, backed by your node, it makes it no-custodial.
It will still be custodial for the rest of the mint users, as a single user mint makes no sense in cashu architecture.
🤷
I wanted now to enumerate the benefits of ecash and the possibility of running your own mint, what honestly is equivalent to what you just said, that it improves a lot custodial services, but does not make them no-custodial generally (for everyone). Yeah, I agree.
> the mint can steal everyone's money whenever they feel like it but they can't selectively steal from or refuse service to any particular user
FTFY
> Mints can pick and choose which users they want to steal from on the basis of any test they come up with, e.g. "Well only steal from North Koreans, or only from women, or only from Jeremy Hudson from Mobile, Alabama"
FTFY
How would they know that information?
By blocking your API queries until you submit satisfactory KYC info and, until then, returning only error messages that direct you to a data collection page
Got it. Thank you
More of an implementation of a mint rather than an inherent flaw of mints.
> ...but only if the user volunteers this info. So don't volunteer it.
FTFY again. This is fun!
> ...and thus lose your money, completing the proof: mints can enforce KYC requirements against any user and penalize the noncompliant
FTFY again, I agree it's fun
It's just faster to say shotgun KYC.
Yes, and I often do
But then people continue to advertise that ecash mints have perfect privacy so then I make threads like this one where I spell out exactly how they can compromise the privacy of any individual user or group of users with a penalty of loss-of-funds if they don't comply
Which means they are perfectly capable of enforcing shotgun KYC
Whereas a protocol with *actual* perfect privacy wouldn't have anyone in a position to enforce *any* kind of KYC
I think you are conflating custodianship with privacy. Any custodian can apply pressure by withholding people's money. This fact doesn't mean anything about the privacy of a protocol.
Privacy is the question of whether someone can deanonymize your activities through some kind of information leakage. Ecash has really really good privacy properties and it is a custodial system.
Judging from this and other conversations I get the impression that you believe custody trumps privacy in some kind of absolute sense. I see a future with blended custody models: transact with ecash, save with bitcoin. Together, these tools are greater than the sum of their parts.
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