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Your vote has meaning because I care about what “normal people” think. The poll isn’t about what’s right or wrong. That’s up to how judges will interpret the definition.
which points from the definition do you count that under?
Money transmitter
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Oh, I'm not normal. But I'll give you my opinion of the interpretation that I'd want to see, so that you also know the opinion of the insane and can keep track of that in a special column.
Background: I think that any IOU-based bitcoin (cashu, on-exchange, L-BTC, WBTC and many terribly worse association scams that are fully decoupled from BTC like Saylor's stonks, perps and ETFs) cannot be a permanent solution for Bitcoin-as-freedom-money. This means that for me, developing protocols that cannot work without IOU-ness can only be a temporary solution at best and any tech integrating it must be considered throwaway.
Assertions:
- Large scale custodial convenience services are a recipe to make people get rekt: The mint is a custodian and you rely on its functioning to get your IOU-sats out. If the IOU isn't honored, the value of your IOU-sats declines.
1 IOU-sat != 1 sat. From this perspective, let it be illegal. Best way to have recourse against scammers other than murder. - Small scale custodial convenience however, where you "Uncle Jim" service your family members, neighbors or social activity groups for example, should be possible, because this allows people to help each other out. From this perspective, let it not be illegal.
Luckily, offering a
commercial service is definitely money transmission. Offering a service free of charge, probably shouldn't be, but I'm not sure how that would be interpreted. I hope that it would not be that.Feel free to apply that to whichever cashu mints you were thinking about.
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"Uncle Jim"
I think both of your points are valid, but personally I take issue with the whole encouragement of Bitcoiners to "Uncle Jim". Being a bank, no matter your motives, is not a trivial nor risk-free adventure.
Being someones "Uncle Jim" has a fairly big risk of it ending in disaster - regardless if your were at fault or not. Casually intermingling financial responsibilities with friends/family always has a way to end in the worst possible way for all involved.
If the complexities of using Bitcoin mandate that you need Uncle Jims then its time to either (a) improve that, or (b) acknowledge that professional custodians are a thing for valid reasons.
No rational economic market relies on people providing custodial services for free...thus it makes sense why laws don't make exceptions for "You were a money-transmitter but doing it out of the goodness of your heart"
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Yes, in my experience, involving money in relationships usually ends badly.
Example: I lent my ex €1000—we were in a relationship at the time—and when I started to ask when I would get my money back after a few months (iirc), she started to get defensive.
I fortunately did get my money back at some point, but not my relationship, lol.
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I don't know why she broke up with me, she never told me.
But I assume our communication issues were definitely high on the list.
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I will only ever lend money to friends again if they can tell me exactly when they’ll pay me back (it can also happen in installments). And if they can’t pay me back on time, I expect them to tell me in advance and give me a new deadline. If they still can’t pay me back, I expect a very good explanation; else I’m done with them.
But I’m not sure it’s worth the risk, so maybe I just shouldn’t do it and should help them in other ways instead.
There’s a reason credit scores exist.
there is no lending in a relationship. only gifts from her point of view.
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Like I said, IOU-ness can only be temporary; it cannot be a systematic approach. So you shouldn't be "Uncle Jim" forever, unless you're James, then you're that to your sister's kids.
I don't think Bitcoin needs it intrinsically. But humans need to help other humans, preferably not a persistent dependency, but a temporary workaround. These will always be needed, because a planet with 8 billion people on it will always have complexities.
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100%
I've always felt that CashU was completely valid for short-term use. Imagine you go to a music festival and you buy CashU tokens using the festivals web app. Then you can go around buying food/drinks and eventually "cash out" back to Bitcoin at end.
This solves many issues with using Bitcoin in such an environment and only introduces a small manageable amount of risk.
Sadly though, this is probably a "money transmitter" service.
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Technically, if you're selling tokens at your festival, you're a stored value provider, so you're a money transmitter then too. Festivals are anyway traps where they throw away your bottle of Evian under the excuse that it could be GHB, but somehow the markup inside the gates is 300% - at a minimum.
The incentive of not honoring the IOU afterwards when people want to cash back out is kind of compelling though, so maybe they should just integrate LN straight, without the custodial aspect. Less middlemen, more joy.
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It feels like cashu exists because lightning is bad at async receive and on boarding with small amounts. People don't want to run an always available node and they don't want to manage liquidity. That is not going to change. Hopefully lightning gets to the point where users aren't aware they are doing these things.
The distinction between mints that operate for profit and not is interesting: if the laws are such that they push mints toward being nonprofit endeavors, I'd say that is bad -- one of the things that might keep a mint honest is if they are making a lot of money.
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The law under discussion is about asking for permission. You're only an illegal money transmitter if you didn't ask for permission to be a money transmitter, right?
What I meant to say, regardless of profit or non-profit, is equivalent of this:
- If I lend you $10 with no interest because you're short on cash and you need food, it would be really dumb for anyone to try and regulate me.
- If I sell 1000 people a mortgage at interest... I have less problems with regulation.
Bottom line, let the corporations be regulated. Let people be free.
so maybe they should just integrate LN straight
Would be possible but much more complicated. First off you have the dreaded liquidity issues: Is the beer seller going to rebalance his liquidity channels mid-operation to get more inbound liquidity.....
More to the point though, the purpose of "tickets" is that the organizer takes a cut. So you sell beer-for-tickets and at the end of the show the vendor redeems the tickets they earned back to festival organizer for 70% value in cash (or whatever).
Point is, CashU most directly fits that model as Cash Tokens = Tickets pretty directly.
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Yeah, liquidity rebalancing is something that is best automated on LN. The mint will have the same issues (and I think I've seen this issue in the wild this year, twice) but it's centralized so it can spend more time on it.
I don't disagree that the solution could be fitting for a festival. Either way it should be possible, preferably without permission. The world isn't ready for permissionless though; half my discussions nowadays are with people that use GPT to try and show how smart they are.
Is the beer seller going to rebalance his liquidity channels mid-operation to get more inbound liquidity.....
Cant he use Coinos?
Show me in that "law" where it says anything about Bitcoin as money.
If they would say something like this their whole fiat system will fall. The whole lie of "legal tender" will fall. That's why they will avoid it and let clueless normies to think that anything can be put under their crap useless so called laws (words on a paper).
THE FEAR is what is driving people to think that gov have any control and/or authority over your money.
Even the term "Money transmitter"is a total bullshit. If money can't be transmitted freely, then it will cease to be money, they became currencies (aka money by decree).
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You don't have to change anything. Just ignore their bullshit.
Reminder:
With the simple fact that you are aware of their bullshit, you won against them. And they know it.
The whole power of a government it stays in clueless normies belief in a government. The most dangerous superstition. And when that belief is eroded and destroyed, the whole house of cards will fall down.
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How many stackers record calculate and pay the tax due on each and every zap?
My guess is zero or close to it.
I know I dont.
It would make using stacker news unduly burdensome.
Just like the fiat debt slavery enabling sponsor-government intended.
But realistically most people do not want to break the law because government has trained people to obey and will sometimes make an example of those who do not obey...
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stored valueunder 3/4?