Oddbean new post about login | logout People can spend money using ecash wallets. I believe this is what matters regarding privacy.
It's cool, but requires trust in a third party so breaks the problem Satoshi was trying to solve with Bitcoin
We don't need a lot of trust for petty cash.
Sure, but when you want privacy for amounts greater than petty cash? Public mint operators are also vulnerable to the same money transmitter laws that brought down Samourai, Tornado Cash, AgoraDesk, Wasabi, etc You can solve this with anonymous mint operators, but that means they can rug their users with little to no consequence
added time, cost, complexity and trust just for privacy? and "this is what matters"? i'm struggling to believe this is your actual opinion.
Privacy when you spend money is a huge win and it's easy and cheap to use. On-Chain isn't really private yet but it isn't very different than before.
how big of a channel did you open to get on Lightning? who is your channel partner? which mint do you "trust"? these are not insignificant questions, but it seems like your personal circumstances make them "petty" concerns. good for you i guess, but expand your view, please.
You can purchase Bitcoin directly via Lightning/ecash and there is a fairly high number of ecash wallet. Maybe spending money is a better expression.
okay, i have bitcoin and not Lightning sats, but i want to have "private spending money," in the sense we're discussing here. what do i do, how long will it take, who do i have to interact with? these are not straightforward questions. please don't act like it's as easy as "get an ecash wallet."
I suggest you watch nostr:nprofile1qqspnzgrfett3asxcuj0gksje6z2zxzpvgd27uvz58m9vsuqh8zzw6cpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqgjwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxqg5waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxgctdw4eju6t0rjj54p tutorials. This is how I've learned. It's not harder then learning how On-Chain bitcoin works.
you misunderstand me. my questions were largely rhetorical because i felt like you were being dismissive of real concerns. i know how to do it, but all of the choices involved seem very much NOT WORTH the effort.
You're free to do whatever you want.
this convo was useless and i hope you realize the way in which these sorts of discussions get sabotaged by ignorance and dismissive DYOR platitudes. enjoy your ecash i guess.
ecash is actually stupid easy. buy bitcoin on kraken or coinbase, go to a cashu web wallet, plug the minibits URL into it, and withdraw your kraken money to it via LN. the problem is that ecash takes a massive shortcut by throwing the entire concept of sovereignty on the floor and stomping all over it, then it takes a giant dump all over the trampled remains. then you wind up with fractional reserve banking. ecash is for people who think that doesn't matter.
i think we're generally in agreement, but onboarding to Lightning (seriously shouldn't have to onboard to use money) in this way hides a lot of the complexity that i think people need to engage in more critically. that's what i was trying to argue, not just the problems with ecash, but the problems with all the steps. IMO any benefits of ecash are not worth the baggage of the other steps. buy bitcoin on an exchange, as a means to somewhere down the line have private custodial paper claims on unsettled bitcoin? that's insane.
for ecash enthusiasts, fractional reserve banking can be handwaved away and the way that bitcoin really works doesn't matter as long as it looks like it works. it's not for you, it's for wringing more market cap out of people with room temperature IQs.