If you need to refer to both Kant and Wittgenstein... then maybe the point you are trying to make is to ... meta ?

Thanks for writing this @roy! There are a BUNCH of terms in bitcoin that we really need to replace and “wallet” is high on that list. I haven’t yet seen a good general replacement for “wallet” yet. I like your point that a lightning-enabled podcast app is just a podcast app.

love the term wallet

Correct me, are you saying those "Wallet"(or whatever they call themselves) apps are all custodial-based? how about those non-custodial ones?

I think it's both inspiring and disturbing because it's true. But the right question is "Does it matter?" or "Will it matter someday?

I suspect I can answer them but good to see the discussions and verifications in the real world. To me, the name is not a core issue, but the fact that we are still far away from real decentralized money.

Bitcoin is digital property, and you use it like cash. If you don't like the term wallet, than call it a money clip? I agree it technically isn't accurate in regard to what is happening under the hood but from an abstract user-experience perspective, there is no better analogy than wallet. This is true of lightning and on-chain.

Technically bitcoin doesent actually exist in the wallet at all, but in the blockchain because "your coin" is a public ledger entry that can only be modified by signing a change authorization with your private key.

Keys aren't a good term for asymmetric cryptography either, because the full analogy should include the lock too. Keys and locks aren't exactly correct either, because you aren't using it to open a thing but to scramble data. A smartphone isn't technically accurate because the phone part is technically just the microphone that measures sound, and there's not much smart about that part. Telephone isn't accurate either because it leaves out the electric part and the reciever/speaker part. The same applies to the words phone and speaker, terms drawn from poor analogies.

You can critique almost every word built on an analogy used in the world and find them lacking, but the reason we use them is to convey their usefulness to people who don't care about the intricacies under the hood.

I say we stop mincing words and let the inventor of a technology have the right to coin words around it. To do otherwise simply seems rude and cheeky.