Lightning is difficult for onboarding (online requirements, liquidity, etc.) and its usage has an inherent cost to it (opening and closing channels, rebalancing...) which results in many users choosing a custodial lightning provider.
Ecash is a better way to do custody, because it works without acounts and balances
Tanks for clarifying this again.
On that note, in future would purchasing cashu tokens with a credit card via wherever be any easier than purchasing standard in-LN-wallet sats with a credit card via say Strike or Moonpay? Or nothing really changes there, it's still the same on-ramp for cardholders? Thanks!
My understanding is that it is base layer agnostic, so I think it should work very similarly. Ecash was first implemented on fiat, then later ported to bitcoin/lightning (cashu)
Right thanks. I was hoping it might unlock an easier path to purchase via credit or debit card, but see what you're saying that it's a riff off the same chords.
You can swap ecash for close to anything, as long as the mint implements it. The only thing that really matters is finality of the swap medium. Because once the ecash is issued, the mint doesn't know what the ecash looks like (due to the blind signing). So the mint cannot invalidate it in case the user refunds the transaction.
So a credit card, which has charge backs and finality in the order of weeks, would not work well.
Physical cash, which has instant finality works well.
Great point, thanks.
Thanks very clearly put. I suppose some startup somewhere is creating a physical vending machine where you can put real cash in and cashu tokens come out, along these lines.
