There are people on here calling cashu bitcoin. Don’t fall for the hype.
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Shit. Was I not supposed to convert our entire stack into cashu this morning??? My bad
I see you post this semi-often. Can you explain what you mean? (actually curious for your reasoning, I'm not too familiar with cashu and looking to learn your pov)
Goddamnit, Nos 🤦🏻♂️
WERE RUINED
😭
It’s an IOU. The current implementation can just be redeemable and funded with Bitcoin. But you cant prove the reserves at the mint and the mint can rug you. And the mint can run fractional reserves just like your fiat bank.
I just bought a whole canister. Guess I just gotta eat em.
Ok 🤔 obviously relying on trust, but are you against cashu for more private transactions with pocket money?
Just use lightning on your own node. There’s not a good use care for it. ESP. A single user.
Isn't this the same as saying, "Custodial Bitcoin isn't Bitcoin"?
Cashu and any other form of eCash we've seen so far us just custodial Lightning with some better privacy guarantees.
I get fired up because I hear prominent bitcoiners talk as if cashu is backed 1:1 with bitcoin. I hear things like it’s lightning with more privacy. These statements are dishonest. Cashu isn’t dependent on Bitcoin in any way. You don’t need to run a node or lightning node. There is an option for mint operators to add a lightning funding source which could be any lightning addresses custodial or non custodial. When you use someone’s mint you are essentially using a group lightning address controlled by the mint operator.
Cashu is just another solution in search of a problem. That’s why I think Calle is pro spam. He wants to clog up the blockchain with dick butts and act like a savior with cashu.
The cashu crowd is a bunch of pretentious grifters.
The argument is anonymity but at what cost? You have to use it with many users to gain the anonymity you can get with lightning already and you can do offline payments with bolt12
No lies detected.
Cashu is just a protocol. You can use cashu to have ecash dollars, gold, weed. I don't see cashu as bitcoin anymore than http is bitcoin.
Cashu is an IOU system. Bitcoin is a bearer asset.
Do a little extra research today. I thought the same thing before. After I did more reading It’s really not good. And shady AF.
Fractional reserve banking with Cashu is a real thing.
100%. There are also many other pressing problems that need to be worked on, I respect the innovation but I think we are getting buried elsewhere. We need more technical folks and its not enough, even with all the vibing
Cashu is a protocol that can issue an iou for anything.
i agree cashu the protocol is not bitcoin the protocol or the asset. I also agree that cashu the protocol issues a bearer asset that is an iou for any number of other assets.
Argueing that because some people confuse cashu the protocol for actual bitcoin the asset, doesn't make cashu the protocol bad or unuseful. kinda a strawman.
is a seed phrase an iou? You can hold a seed but not a utxo.
One reason I always respected calle was that he stated from the start that self custodial bitcoin is best and that cashu the protocol was custodial iou.
i really don't see many people saying cashu is bitcoin.
i have played with cashu since calle was dming me full strings. I was one of the first accounts to zap on nostr using minibits. It has great utility and will be very useful for poor people who can't afford a utxo or ln channel.
I have been using cashu since it was invented.
That made me laugh more than it should have 🤣
You are rich in nuts, now it would be good if you became squirrels
Definitely not. ecash is an IOU. and doesn’t even require Bitcoin to work. It’s “paper” money.
🤭
True 🤔
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Easier to just use a privacy shitcoin.
Atleast they run nodes.
Nah that seems misleading. Yes a mint can be corrupt in many ways, but unlike with the banking system you can just switch mints or run your own
just run a lighting node. That’s actually bitcoin and channels and keys you control. I still see only risk with fake ecash and mints.
It’s not misleading. It can and does happen. What do you do if you get rugged before you switch mints? Just settle sats in a lightning channel you control.
So it's more so a transferable token redeemable for sats (assuming mint is solvent and trustworthy)? But can't be truly assumed to be redeemable because of the trust that is required
I always thought Lightning was pretty damn anonymous, if using a non-custodial wallet. Right?
It also depends how you define non-custodial, because there are different levels of privacy available based on the type of wallet and underlying infrastructure used. If you’re running your own TOR node will get substantially more privacy than Phoenix, for example, where all your channels are through a single provider, or on the newer nodeless wallet offerings that trade some privacy and trust assurances for simpler and friendlier UX that better matches the custodial feel.
cool to read all this
my sense is i wouldnt get involved in any of this without a new phone new number
speaking personally
my phone is very unupdated not cloudsyncing and god only knows with a
shot battery for years now
was a second hand purchase to begin with
not a new phone
factory reset or whatever
from an ibmer
Calle. So hot right now.
Bitcoin is Bitcoin
You can however send ecash sats from an ecash wallet to a regular lightning wallet.
And and you can send sats from a lightning wallet to an e cash wallet.
It’s still sats….
I've also always thought about cashu as private custodial lightning, nothing more nothing less.
It's basically a super private IOU that cab be issued against many different types of assets (incl. BTC)
The sender can also pay for stuff without internet connection (paper qr codes, etc.)
LN complements ecash mints quite nicely
Yeah, but I think it's okay, as long as you are upfront about this.
I would like a wallet with the following features.
1. Cashu for amounts below 1,000 sats
2. Once 10,000 sats are saved, they automatically transfer transfer to Fedimint.
3. 100,000 sats are auto-transfered to Liquid.
4. 1,000,000 sats automatically transfer to mainnet.
I'm not sure how to vibe code that yet...🤫
"Just run a lightning node" ok once you have on boarded 21 boomers to doing this, then you get to say this
Do you nean ecash or are you specifically refering to cashu
With fake money. You do you, but I’ll keep using the hardest asset and hardest barer asset that ever existed. I don’t disagree you CAN do this. But SHOULD we. And just don’t fool yourself with thinking ecash is bitcoin. It’s a shit coin at best. And probably worse because uninformed people will think it is of misinformed people keep calling it that.
I guess kinda, you can pay lightning invoices with it. But you can convert lots of shitcoin to lightning. It doesn’t make it bitcoin.
Not saying it’s easy. I’m just not confused about ecash actually being bitcoin. It’s not.
Very bullish on Bitcoin and cashu 🔥
I re-listened to Richard Werner podcast again today and I can't help but hear the vision of Hal Finney echoed in his words. The proliferation of open banking with hard money has created immense prosperity for humanity in many parts of the world at different times.
Why wouldn't we do all we could to encourage the world to return to that wisdom?
Can anybody remind me what Cashu’s hashrate is?
Do you think any other custodial relationship involves anything more than an IOU? It doesn't.
That's the definition of "custodial." Instead of holding your own keys to your Bitcoin, you only hold an IOU. As long as you just interact with others willing to accept those IOUs as payment, you never have to make an actual Bitcoin or Lightning transaction.
That's not unique to eCash. That is how ALL custodians work.
Including Coinos, by the way. They can rug you just as easily as any eCash mint.
Wait, what else can you ossue against it?
This is painful. Yes, there is risk to custodial bitcoin. But that is still bitcoin locked in a channel on the block chain. Ecash is a figment of someone’s creation and doesn’t need to be backed by anything.
Also if you’re trying to call me out for “using” CoinOS fine. But I know my threat/trust model. I keep less than 500 sats in CoinOS. And Adam has made every user whole if there was a problem. I have run my own node for over 5years.
I’m just not fooling myself in believing ecash is anything more than someone’s made up token. That they take your bitcoin for.
You're absolutely right. It's not Bitcoin. Neither is any other custodial Bitcoin, whether an ETF or a custodial Lightning wallet. None of it is actual Bitcoin.
That said, most people simply will not be willing to do what is needed for self-custody Lightning. I say that as someone who runs my own lightning node, and who has called out these LIghtning/Liquid hybrid wallets as not actually being self-custidy.
I am not sure it is possible to make self-custody approachable enough that most people will hold their own keys for anything outside of long-term savings on chain.
None of your balance on ANY custodian is necessarily "locked in a channel" on the blockchain. It is fundamentally no different than eCash.
I also run a Lightning node, and I host Lightning wallets for a few friends and family. I can add any amount of sats to their wallet that I want. I can zero out their balance entirely. All of it without any actual sats moving through a Lightning channel.
Indeed, I could close all my Lightning channels, sending the funds on-chain to my own cold-storage, and their wallet will not indicate that their balance changed whatsoever.
And no, my setup doesn't use eCash whatsoever.
I assure you that all custodians can do the same.
I wasn't calling you out for using Coinos. Use what you want. I was calling you out for not understanding that your wallet with Coinos is not a fundamentally different situation than someone who uses Minibits as their custodian.
I very much know the difference, but thank you.
You've yet to state a single valid difference between eCash and any other kind of custodial relationship.
There can only be 21million bitcoin. Custodial lighting providers have lightning channels opened and backed with bitcoin.
Ecash is tokens. Not bitcoin. You can send them gold or sneakers or whatever has “value” to you and them and they issue tokens. As many as they want to make and issue.
Yes. Both require trust. Both can theoretically pay lightning invoices. But that doesn’t make them the same.
Ecash was created before bitcoin. Bitcoiners just choose to take bitcoin for payment for their pretend tokens.
How does eCash pay a Lightning invoice that is somehow different from using sats locked in a Lightning channel?
Moreover, what mechanism is there to keep a regular Lightning wallet custodian from issuing more IOUs than they have sats to back them?
Answers:
eCash wallets use Lightning channels to pay Lightning invoices. Just like every other custodian.
Lightning custodians can also arbitrarily issue more IOUs than they have actual sats to back them up, just like eCash wallets can.
Thise supposed differences of yours are not differences whatsoever.
I guess we are at stalemate.
Yes. There’s risk in custodial I’m not denying that. That’s not my argument here.
My argument is calling ecash tokens bitcoin. When they are by very definition not. And I’ll stand by that part of the statement.
No disagreement here. eCash absolutely is NOT Bitcoin. My co tention has nothing to do with trying to argue that eCash is Bitcoin in any way. It 100% is not Bitcoin.
My contention is that no other custodial IOU is Bitcoin either, and that there is not anything better about using a custodial Lightning wallet than there is about using eCash.
Then we are arguing for no reason.
That's moving the goal posts. I have agreed this entire time that eCash is not Bitcoin. Said it right out the gate here that custodial Lightning is just as much an IOU as eCash:
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Neither one is Bitcoin has been my contention all along.
We are arguing because you seem to think that other forms of custodial relationships are different, and better, than eCash.
They aren't!
They are just as much "tokens" and IOUs as eCash is. They aren't Bitcoin either.
All I’m saying is one is actually Bitcoin.
One is not, by definition.
Both are come with risks. I’m not willing to play with for more than penny’s
Custodial Lightning you trust them to store your bitcoin, and not lose it or rug it.
Ecash you give them any asset. Sometimes it happens to be Bitcoin and they say thank you for the bitcoin and they give you chuckie-cheese tokens in return they hold your bitcoin. Then if you want to spend your bitcoin you hope your chuckie-cheese tokens are still redeemable and that chuckie-cheese didn’t file bankruptcy.
That's where we part ways. Neither one of them are Bitcoin. Both are entirely IOUs. And yes, Lightning custodians happen to use Bitcoin as what they call those IOUs, but not even that is necessarily the case.
Strike, for instance, lets you send and receive zaps just like any other Lightning custodian, but you can choose whether your IOUs are denominated in Bitcoin or USD, or other fiat currencies based on your jurisdiction.
Same thing with Aqua wallet, which lets you receive either LBTC or Liquid Tether, both of which are just IOU tokens. Still custodial, too, just takes more people to collude to rug you, and they would have to rug everyone at once.
A Lightning custodian can denominate your IOUs in anything they want, just like eCash can. It's just that most of them opt to denominate your IOUs in Bitcoin rather than something else.
There is absolutely nothing intrinsically tying your balange in any custodial Lightning wallet to any specific or group of Lightning channels, or even to sats as a denomination of Bitcoin. Custodial Bitcoin of any type is equally just an IOU token, and is NOT Bitcoin.
By this logic custodial dollars in your traditional bank account are not "dollars".
However they clearly are dollars.
And inverse, calling casino chips dollars because they are valued in dollars is also not right. Clearly they are casino chips.
It's important to separate what things are from how they are handled. Yes custodial bitcoin can stolen, but the thing stolen was bitcoin.
Casino chips and dollars have very different properties, so each should be called what it is to make sure we are referring to what thing with what properties. And again the *handling* of that thing, whether honest or dishonest, is a separate matter to what the thing *is*.
Oh, no. Custodial dollars in your bank account very much are dollars, but that's because unlike Bitcoin, dollars aren't anything more than IOUs in any form they take. That's why we call it "fiat."
The value of all money is a figment of human imagination. Money is a shared delusion. That holds for fiat just as much as it holds for bitcoin. The moment enough people stop believing in it's value the value disappears. Contrast this to a coconut. You can stop "believing" in a coconut all you want, it's value, insofar as it's milk and flesh nourishes the human body, remains absolute.
So no, there is no such gulf between bitcoin and fiat, there are simply different hooks on which to hang our collective imagination.
So the distinction between bitcoin and cashu, as between dollars and casino tokens, is still valid. And if it's not then it's not based on the fact that ALL money is imagination-based, including both bitcoin and fiat.
Zeus is doing something like this
https://blog.zeusln.com/new-release-zeus-v0-11-0/
CD120 Cashu w/Calle
https://fountain.fm/episode/9F41y47cxqN2LlE4yQKd
Yes, thank you. This is what I’ve been trying to explain. I’d send you sats not Cashu for helping if you had zaps enabled lol
Much appreciated.
It"s the best way to implement it so far.
There is a massive gulf between Bitcoin and fiat. Bitcoin cannot be arbitrarily created by anyone. It requires real-world energy and time via PoW mining. The exact total supply of Bitcoin is known and audited by thousands of nodes every single block. There is no way to digitally self-custody dollars whatsoever, while digital self-custody is the default in Bitcoin.
The above and numerous other properties of Bitcoin make it a fundamentally different thing from fiat currencies of any kind.
Dollars in a bank account are only real dollars because there is no way for dollars to exist except as tokens a central authority issues and says we must use for transacting and paying taxes.
Bitcoin sitting in a bank acvount is not Bitcoin, because it DOES exist separately from a centralized authority issuing tokens denominated in sats. There IS a way to take custody of actual sats that cannot be arbitrarily inflated.
What info can a 3rd party actually source from an invoice paid with Phoenix though?
testing zaps for this note… your profile only specifies a nip05 nostr address, but not a lightning address, so we tried to zap your nip05 address.... we made six attempts to⚡zap this note, at garbagensec@nostraddress.com, over a period of 17 minutes. in each case, we found that your lightning address service or server did not respond correctly. if you wanted to fix this... you could try getting a free rizful lightning address -- https://rizful.com ... if u get it set up, pls reply here so we can do this ⚡zap test again.
I just mean that all of your transactions go through ACINQ, so you just have to be okay with that.
It's all make-believe in the end. All value that we currently attribute to all money, be it fiat, crypto or anything else, it's all just make believe. Lore. Belief. We're all just imagining it together, surely you can see that?
ahh ok, I see
you’re missing the point. cashu improves privacy for custodial systems. think wallet of satoshi but with better privacy than monero.
100% agree
True
He’s not denying the statement that it isn’t bitcoin. I call that progress.
Pedo