Its auto converted to ecash, also called 'minting'

If you send your freshly minted ecash to another minibits user (like me) you will send ecash (specifically a cashu token), not lightning*.

If you choose to pay a lightning invoice, not a minibits mint, you will auto convert your ecash to lightning, also called 'melting'

A bit technical below👇

*you can pay a minibits lightning invoice from your minibits ecash wallet (like zapping me, my minibits lightning@address), which you have already minted into ecash. If you did this, you would be melting ecash to the minibits lightning node, crediting my account.

- since its the same lightning node (from you to me), on the node it looks like the node just paid itself

This is why ecash is so powerful; minibits node just saw a 'self-pay', but it has no idea which user paid which other user, even if they wanted to know.

So so cool.