0 sats \ 0 replies \ @fiatbad 24 Jun \ on: Stackers do you take Sunday off? culture
"Don't trust, verify"
Let's distrust government propaganda, but completely ignore the role "the church" and religion has played toward controlling the peasantry throughout modern history. Let's just believe stupid shit because it makes us feel good, but be "strong" and "sovereign" in all other areas of life, such as finance, guns, food, energy, etc.
If anything, Bitcoin has made my Atheism stronger. Christianity is fiat, and there is zero "verification" for a creator or a god of any kind. Zero evidence, outside of humans making shit up.
Deleted because I tried to edit and didn't realize "canceling" my edit would delete my original post. But I feel it was important enough to try again:
I would also 100% agree if we could prove who or what our "creator" is. But the evidence is abysmal. Do not trust, verify instead. Don't believe things on abysmal evidence. And don't make up evidence to make yourself feel better or in order to fit into fake "fellowships".
Sunday morning "fellowship" is no different than the "fellowship" that the terrorists experienced right before they carried out the 9/11 attacks. It's no different than the camaraderie experienced in war.
I would teach my children to understand that "fellowship" is an experience..... not a truth. Emotion should never be a guide to truth. Sunday morning worship is a human experience.... not a "truthful" one.
Let's use gold as an example. We all know the story of how banks started issuing paper notes that could be redeemed for gold at the bank. This way, the paper becomes a bearer asset as well.
This is the same scenario you're suggesting with Bitcoin and ecash, where Bitcoin is akin to gold and ecash akin to the paper notes.
However, what if instead of issuing paper, the banks could hammer the gold thin enough to become paper-like? Do a google search for "Gold Backs". I don't think they had the technology to create these Gold Backs way back in the day, which is why they went with paper notes.
Mint software can be written in such a way that we get the bearer-asset properties of ecash, without exposing ecash at all. Similar to how we could use Gold Backs instead of paper notes. (it's a rough metaphor, but work with me).
The code can be written so that the ecash piece is treated as a DB layer only. We don't have to acknowledge the bearer asset part of it. I mean, we acknowledge it by calling it an "internal, decentralized database". Internal to the Mint. We already have Bitcoin as a universal, global, external decentralized DB.
If new ecash is created and destroyed every time Bitcoin leaves or enters the Mint, then there is a 1-to-1 relationship between Sats and ecash. So why not just display the Sat value at all times to the users of the Mint? Why does the ecash layer need to be exposed? It's just the DB layer. But it's up to us to keep it that way and prevent people from trying to turn it into another form of shitcoin.
Yes, absolutely.
Everything I've said here should be taken as design suggestions for the Fedi team and other Federated Mint devs.
Technically, Bitcoin is just a fancy, decentralized database as well. People give the DB entries value because we recognize its use-case for money.
I'm suggesting that we don't allow ourselves to give ecash any value, based on principle. The same way we don't value shitcoins, even though they technically are similar to Bitcoin. It's the social layer that I'm appealing to here.
I'm asking the users and the devs of Mints to view ecash simply as the DB layer. To give it special value based on its decentralized properties, the way we do with Bitcoin, is akin to shitcoining.
It is very fuzzy and complicated, which is why I'm having this conversation today with people here. I'm trying to organize my own thoughts and see if others can poke holes in my arguments so I can refine them or change them.
People only blame Bitcoin now because of how new and under-utilized it is (relative to fiat). They don't understand it.
In a world with thousands of local mints, with LN nodes connecting the mints, and millions of merchants taking Sats for payment.... Bitcoin won't be blamed anymore. It will be very clear that the Mint's guardians rugged you, and not the money itself.
I think we should develop for that future world, and not for today's world. Thus, we should treat ecash simply as the DB layer for Mints, and nothing more. In fact, let's drop the ecash term and start saying "Mint Specific Decentralized Database System." Or MSDDS.
Here's my new marketing suggestion for the Fedimint team:
"Ecash doesn't exist. Fedimint implemented MSDDS as a way to decentralize the internal databases of these Federated Mints which themselves are a new L2 strategy for the Bitcoin Ecosystem."
There, that's what devs need to start saying. Fixed this ecash debate right here, right now.
Let's apply this line of reasoning to any other centralized apps people use today.
With a fiat banking app, when you send dollars to someone using Zelle to pay for lunch, they never received anything other than a database update statement.
If you send Bitcoin on Strike or CashApp to another user on the same app, they never receive any actual Bitcoin... they simply get a database update statement representing an IOU for Bitcoin in the future.
This is exactly how a Mint works as well... only, the database is ecash instead of SQL. But why does it matter which DB implementation was chosen? The social implications are the same.
The average person knows that the money in our fiat banks are just numbers in a database. But they don't know HOW those databases work or how the bank's financial plumbing works. They don't need to. This is the same for a Mint. We don't need to know that ecash is being used to move things around. It's enough to know that we are trusting a Mint, just like we trust a bank, and we could be rugged. That is enough for 99% of users. Don't confuse the users with the inner workings of it... don't confuse them with terms like "ecash" at all.
"they may sell ecash tokens for USD or who knows what"
Okay, then they exchange their ecash for Sats from the Mint, and then exchange those Sats for USD or whatever else. And they do this exchange in an automated way, behind the scenes where the user never realizes they made such an exchange!!!!
I feel like you're arguing that people should be able to trade their SQL database entries in CashApp with each other instead of the IOU Bitcoin the entries represent.
Ecash is just the DB layer. Stop treating it like a tradable token.
Sure, we could trade SQL rows instead of the assets within those rows.... but holy shit, we're just being stupid at that point. Ecash should never be used like this. Let's just nip this crap in the bud now.
If we start treating ecash as anything other than a simple DB layer, we're going to start having problems. It will start to get very shitcoin-like very fast.
I dunno... I guess I'm thinking further out in the future.
There have been so many rug-pulls from banks and financial institutions in the past, yet no one was blaming the money. They blamed the banks.
The dollars in a bank are just numbers in a computer. They are literally just database entries. Yet, they are displayed in our banking apps as "real" dollars. I'm suggesting we do the same with mints.
Ecash is a database of sorts. Similar to my banking example above. It's just the database. And it should be treated as such, not as a new crypto.... we should drop the "ecash" term entirely.
When people get rugged by a Mint, it's not ecash's fault.... it's not the database's fault.
All apps abstract technical details from users and display what the users want to see. This is what makes a good app. Ecash is a technical detail that should be abstracted away.
Were people acting this way toward Schnorr Signatures before Taproot was released?
I think ecash is misleading because it sounds like a new "token" or cryptocurrency of some kind. People are associating it as such, and misunderstanding the role of ecash.
This is a failure on the part of Fedimint devs. They carelessly throw around the "ecash" term like shitcoin scammers (even though I know that's not their intent). They are devs, not marketing experts, and I think they fucked up the marketing for Fedi overall.
Ecash makes Mints work. But the Ecash part of it should be abstracted away as much as possible. It shouldn't be advertised. Mints should display everything in Sats. The ecash recovery phrases should be marketed as a way to "backup your BITCOIN in the mint" and shouldn't refer to ecash whatsoever. (Even though, technically they are backing up their ecash, users should not know this). The user experience should be entirely Sats-based. Market the backup as "a new way to backup Bitcoin" if you must, but for fuck's sake don't mention ecash in the UI.
Mints are a way to onboard people to Bitcoin, and ecash is a huge part of that. But the ecash portion should be treated like all the other technical layers of the Bitcoin ecosystem... it's just another L2. But the word "ecash" makes it sound like something outside of Bitcoin altogether. We need to remedy this marketing mishap.
Yea, I know.
I'm speaking more from an app design perspective. An LN node isn't required in the protocol, but it should be such an important piece of a mint's infrastructure that the app makes it clear what the node's status is and whether there even is one.
"Fedimint guardians don't run a Lightning node or hold HTLCs"
It should be built into the app to enforce the existence of a LN node for the mint, including statistics about said node. Such as inbound/outbound balance, number of channels, etc.
If the mint's LN node is offline, there should be a giant red notification to all users that the health of the mint is not good.
"Do users understand"..... ???
I wish we would stop talking about eCash in public at all. It's gotta be confusing the shit out of regular users.
I see ecash as a technical layer in a larger protocol. In any Mint-based App, the user should simply see how many Sats they have. They do not need to know that it's really eCash.
I have not used Fedimint yet, but I've done a lot of reading on it. I'm praying as hard as I can to Odin himself that when I open the Fedi app for the first time I DO NOT SEE ANY MENTION OF ECASH! I hope the devs are not that stupid. It's part of the protocol, but it should be abstracted away from users just like the layers of the internet, and even fiat banks, are abstracted away from the users. Just show me my Sat balance and let me send it cheaply, privately, and fast, for fuck's sake.
Good point.
OP had a really good point about MSB. But the U.S. is not the whole world.... and Federated Mints with thousands of users, dozens of well-known key holders, and a single large well managed LN node, sounds like absolute heaven. It's the promised land, and we shouldn't poo-poo it simply because the U.S. is a big bully.
Bitcoin is going to be quite centralized in a world that is mostly at peace and trading with one another normally. There will be Federations and LN Hubs and Bitcoin Banks all over the place. And that's okay, as long as we retain the ability to run our own nodes, and exit the centralized system when shit hits the fan. Optionality is what Bitcoin offers that fiat never could.
The same goes for Nostr. It will centralize. BUT, we have the OPTION to decentralize when we need to. When the shit hits the fan.
A politician or media persona being censored on one relay has the option to run their own relay! The incentive is strong, because they have a public platform already and wish to retain control over it. Nostr gives these individuals the ability to decentralize when necessary.
Sure, the average person will use it in a centralized way 99% of the time, but the real power comes from OPTIONALITY.
Would love to hear other people's thoughts on this.
Perhaps.... but aren't all the alternatives even worse?
I'm a fan of the saying, "don't let perfect be the enemy of good".
I read through your post from last year about Nostr sucking. I agree with your points, but I can't shake these two thoughts:
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What's the alternative? Nostr might suck, but it sucks less than everything else.
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Many of your concerns might be addressed with further development. I understand some of your concerns are human-nature, and may never be solved by developers. But I still wouldn't write off the potential of further development.
I consider myself neutral and mostly ignorant in this debate... just a Nostr fanboy trying to learn as much as possible.
It's strange how even the smartest analysts seem to have never done any research on the topic of "money" itself.
The dollar, as money, falls into all of this guy's criticisms of Bitcoin. The dollar IS almost entirely digital, after all.
He's not criticizing Bitcoin.... he's criticizing the concept of MONEY. He's still in preschool.