Nostr Web Client

One potential avenue I'd love to hear more thoughts and skepticism on is the viability of the current P2P exchanges out there, what could be improved, etc.

freecritter 2y ago

+☝️

freecritter 2y ago

Also I tried to ⚡️ but keeps getting stuck. Been ⚡️ing fine with others just prior & post the issue with yours. Not sure if it’s my end 🤷😂🤙.

Seth For Privacy 2y ago

Think my setup is working? CLN has been a little flaky for me this weekend but a quick test worker AFAICT!

freecritter 2y ago

I’m not able to ⚡️ the 📝 but I was able to via your profile ⚡️ link FYI.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

Was able to zap the note successfully just now.

freecritter 2y ago

Was able to ⚡️ your 📝 but neither of #[2] still 🤷

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

Hmm that's odd. Do you have problems finding a route or initiating the zap?

freecritter 2y ago

Initiating I believe. Been ⚡️ing all day and no real issues. Just this 📝😂🤷🤙

counterweight 2y ago

Well, most of the volume in P2P exchanges (bisq, robosats, peach, etc) gets settled through banking. So I would be concerned about how a draconian CBDC deployment could impact the scene.

As an antidote to that, it would be great if more real-life meetups and communities pop everywhere. A social web of people meeting in meatspace will endure a lot of oppression.

Seth For Privacy 2y ago

Hell yeah, very good points! For now as long as there isn't a clear connection to Bitcoin in the P2P banking there is usually a lot of freedom when not doing crazy amounts, and I expect that to extend to CBDCs at least for a while.

But for now cash and USPS money orders are by far the most private and permissionless methods.

And yes, ultimately the most resilient scenario is Bitcoiners helping each other in local areas and acting as the on and off-ramps directly, over E2EE platforms like Signal and SimpleX for coordination.

boston wine 2y ago

There’s a difficult-to-avoid drawback of using KYC’d legacy payment methods (Zelle, PayPal, strike, CashApp, etc.) to buy your kyc-free, p2p Bitcoin.

Doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, but it’s certainly a weakness in the overall privacy structure.

Yet cash in person has its own risks and inconveniences. Not something I really see an answer to.

Liquidity depth is also limited. Not that there are that many individuals who want to buy ten bitcoins p2p right now, but still. It’s limited.

Seth For Privacy 2y ago

Key difference to KYC exchanges is there is no link between on-chain activity or a purchase of Bitcoin to the banks etc, only to the P2P partner themselves.

Still not perfect, but a massive step up! Cash or gift cards bought with cash are really the best but a bit of a PITA for sure.

boston wine 2y ago

Definitely agree there!

It doesn’t protect the seller as much, if there are jurisdictional laws against selling p2p (which there shouldn’t be, yet seems like there are for tax collection purposes), but as a buyer I wouldn’t be that worried

Moton 2y ago

Hi Seth I know you recently changed to focusing on bitcoin but I do have a very noob monero question for you if you don’t mind. What would be the difference in terms of traceability if I used kraken to buy monero then sent that monero to my personal wallet then spent that monero? vs buying from local monero which I imagine would go straight to my personal wallet and then spent that monero? (besides the kyc kraken would have are they a able do some kind of forward tracing?

threeseries 2y ago

I think P2P exchanges are unlikely to ever be anything more than niche services used by enthusiasts.

The reality is most people want a single face that they can trust when transacting, not to seek out a new anonymous identity for every trade.

Seth For Privacy 2y ago

I think this is a common misnomer, as most people using P2P platforms like #[5] or HodlHodl go back to the same trader they've established trust and raport with, and often take trades off platform shortly after.

Another benefit of face to face cash trades is building relationships with local Bitcoiners while establishing completely unlinkable swaps of fiat and Bitcoin.

threeseries 2y ago

Fair enough, but I'm talking more about widespread usage by normal people. Most of them are going to want a single unified experience that can be guaranteed every time they use the service.

I think if the exchange can find a way to play more of a role as a middleman it might help (e.g., provide a consistent means of payment rather than the current quasi-barter system of Zelle, CashApp, Strike, etc., etc.), although then it ceases to be P2P.

boston wine 2y ago

Interesting, the idea of going back to the same seller for new sats. Introduces both a lower fraud risk with a potentially trusted/reputable contact, as well as a greater single-point-of-failure risk if you’re buying Bitcoin in a locale where it’s outlawed, due to the potential for UC/sting ops

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

Really? People are buying from the same sellers? How do you know?

Joda 2y ago

I understand the impetus of this line of thinking, but I think it's somewhat misguided. Current P2P exchanges are for enthusiasts and speculators .

For Bitcoin to have a future, it must be useful.

People must be paid in #btc and merchants must be able and willing to accept it.

Remittances sent over BTC (1st-world currency -- BTC -- 3rd-world currency) with two P2P transactions would be too slow and expensive, negating the benefit.

Hyperinflationary countries like Argentina would be a great use case, but because the demand is so high to get out of the national currency, fees would be high and governments are incentivized to ban P2P (further driving up fees).

P2P is a band-aid on a hemorrhaging wound. The surgical suture is direct transactions in Bitcoin. (Not a doctor)

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

P2p Xmr to btc needs to improve. Btc to Xmr only atomic swaps make it appear "rug pully"

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Oh yeah and Bisq is an abosolute nightmare of bloat and poor UI/UX.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

What do you think is the biggest shortcoming of Bisq?

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

All the steps and learning curve to just get set up. The load time for everything. Having to switch tabs to set up an account before even looking at offers and their requirements.

it's a clumsy program that does too much. It should do one or two things well, list the market prices, good. List offers, good.

Also be a DAO and token manager. Not good. Have the Dao stuff on a seperate program for people who care.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

Interesting. So the "next iteration" of Bisq should have less features overall. I wonder if all users should arbitrate for each other to lessen the need for a DAO. Maybe after a couple of buys/sells on the p2p exchange.

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Or have a "Light" or "explore" version.

Something that allows deal finding ect without all the baggage.

Other platforms accomplish positive behavior incentives without the bloat or a DAO.

geodesic 2y ago

Funny you say that... I actually love Bisq. But I never use CEXs, so maybe I'm just ignorant to how smooth an exchange UX could be 🤷‍♂️

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Is AgoraDesk a CEX ? Compare it or Kucoin/Tradeoger with Bisq.

I want Bisq to be what the hype says, but it's a giant fat girl on a teeter-totter.

₿luddha (₿/acc) 2y ago

Will there be enough liquid bitcoin for everyone?

How difficult it will be to introduce further sat divisibility?

Joda 2y ago

I can't find the source but I'm pretty sure this is trivial. I so wish we had @aantonop here

Cyber Seagull 2y ago

Sat fractional reserve banking. 😆😆😆😄

85

web2-enjoyer 2y ago

Has anyone worried about adding certainty to the link between inputs with a coin join? Even if each input is a separate transaction, it’s a bunch of UTXOs with shared ancestors moving around at the same time and doing the same thing.

geodesic 2y ago

Im worried that Lightning wont be adoptable by the masses. Is it really practical to think every person on the planet will have access to their own lightning node or maybe has an 'uncle Jim' who hosts a node for friends/family?

As a Bitcoiner I like to think "oh come on, running your own node isn't that hard". But when I stop and think about humanity as a whole... you know, the farmers, cab drivers, factory workers of the world... I don't see that happening. Im afraid 99% of humanity is going to end up using a custodial service like WoS.

Please convince me I'm wrong. Please convince me we aren't building a 'Bitcoin standard' banking system.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

Do you think people should roll their own "lightning service" or is it enough to just hold their own keys but use some LSP? Because I see a growing trend of non-custodial lightning wallets with a LSP built-in and I'm not sure what to think about it. It's a reasonably good hybrid model, I guess? For people who absolutely cannot run their own node.

geodesic 2y ago

Afaict, the LSP for those wallets still holds the lightning keys, even if the on-chain coins are still non custodial. So the lightning funds are still custodial. I'm not sure which wallet you're talking about though. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Yeah, in a perfect world everyone would run their own node with their own keys, but I don't think that world will ever exist. Most people can't even manage a WiFi router. And... I honestly love Lightning. I'm not a hater. Just skeptical.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I'd still like to see some scaling solutions come to Bitcoin protocol. To become money, Bitcoin needs to scale, but every way I look at lightning, I see a new banking system. And I hate banks.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

I'm referring to the Breez SDK. I've got the impression that the gist of it is to offer easy-to-setup LSP to wallet creators and the keys can actually be held by the users. Guy Swann did a read on it not long ago on Bitcoin Audible. My knowledge is limited to that pod on the topic but it seemed like a solution to this problem.

geodesic 2y ago

Oh really? Thats encouraging! Time to go educate myself a bit on how Breez does this. Thanks for sharing.

I love open source:

https://github.com/breez/breezmobile

Ali Jaderi 2y ago

Will people ever be comfortable with taking full responsibility of their own money knowing that they can lose it (all) with a single miss click of a button?

Bill Merhar 2y ago

I've wondered that myself.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

Nostr will be a test for people to trust themselves with the key to their identity. There can be economic risk to losing your nsec (your lightning wallet) and there's of course the social aspect to it. But I would argue losing access to bitcoin is worse than losing access to nostr. We'll see if the masses can handle the responsibility of holding their keys.

Joda 2y ago

There are various ways around this dilemma now, and sure to be more in the future.

There are services that keep one key in a 2-of-3 multisig (or other arrangements), so you transact normally with your two personally -kept keys and only have the service as a backup.

There are also brilliant projects like #fedimint which allow communities in #Africa and elsewhere to build a local trust group who has the ability to recover accounts.

Bill Merhar 2y ago

On the more basic level, what would people do during a complete and prolonged power outage? Without general access to solar or some off-grid set-up charging phones becomes a challenge, if not impossible.

Joda 2y ago

I think having a charged phone is not the top of your problems.

Water treatment and distribution, sewer, food, climate control all depend on electricity.

Bill Merhar 2y ago

I agree actually. I guess my point was your ability to access economic value becomes non existent if using exclusively bitcoin, when there's no power. I would like to think people would all band together and help each other out in a time like that but..it seems you still have to pay whoever has the resources with something.

Joda 2y ago

Surprisingly, no. Disasters often bring out the best in people: sharing, fairness, voluntarism.

It's prosperity that fosters greed. The USA has hundreds of thousands of homeless people and they don't do jack about it.

Bill Merhar 2y ago

We'll have to agree to disagree on human's survival responses, I think. The last 3 years from my perspective hasn't lead me to believe people increase cooperation in prolonged rough times.

What I was failing to describe was that in the event of the hypothetical "Hash War" regions will be fighting over power (energy). That would imply that some regions would potentially go without energy resources and thus making bitcoin very hard to access as an economic tool. Those areas would essentially lose connection to the global bitcoin network.

I'll admit it's a pretty slim chance but, nonetheless, still a valid thought experiment in my opinion.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

There seems to be a few places in the world where you can truly live on bitcoin right now (El Salvador, Lugano in Switzerland). It seems companies are using services like Bitfinex pay to process bitcoin payments. I'm worried about shotgun-KYC becoming the norm for all payments (you can pay but then you must ID yourself to get the purchased goods/services). Terms and conditions will include full KYC/AML compliance and there's nothing you can do about it as a customer. Taking your business elsewhere won't be possible either if every merchant follows those same rules.

Lee 1y ago

Do you think that will be less of an immediate issue if people use appropriate privacy tools to protect the status of the rest of their stack?

<old>cypherhoodlum 1y ago

Well, sure but the pressure to KYC has never been greater and will probably get considerably worse. The recent EU legislation is a case in point. Using the tools is only part of a solution. You also need to think long-term geopolitical arbitrage to not get fucked.

Lee 1y ago

What you say makes sense.

Do you also see the possibility that game theory will make 'zero KYC' options an attractive offering both for individual companies/merchants and for jurisdictions?

All one needs to do is to break the seal and recruit first followers like Sampson Maow (sp). is trying to do.

<old>cypherhoodlum 1y ago

I think that not enough people care about the non-KYC principle to make offering it an attractive strategy for companies/jurisdictions. Sadly. I think the slow boil strategy of gradually tightening KYC is highly effective whether it's conscious or not.

Lee 1y ago

sadly, I agree

sometimes I forget many people are not oriented to care.

<old>cypherhoodlum 2y ago

One of the best ideas on nostr so far, I think. We need adversarial thinking more than ever.

#SkepticismSundays

#[0]

Derf 2y ago

Great idea for SkepticismSunday, lots of possibilities for topics to flesh out! Some I have off the top of my head :

1: is John-q-public, aka Joe the Plumber, technically capable of being onboarded to use Bitcoin beyond just buying/holding on an exchange, but as a transactional medium?

2. What are the negative implications to AML/KYC? Is it just FUD, or will big brother be coming to claw back my sats?

3. Are mixing services actually providing privacy, or just the perception of privacy?

4. Is lightning sufficiently private for a receiver, or just a sender, or neither?

5. Is the government trying to completely cut off all exchanges from banking with operation chokepoint 2.0? Or are they just limiting (picking) which banks and which exchanges will continue on (Strong KYC / AML compliance required).

Joda 2y ago

1- it's way easier to get a wallet, send, and receive, than it is to go through any exchange (KYC or no) to convert fiat to Bitcoin.

Joda 2y ago

4-- @darthcoin on substack. Enjoy your rabbit hole of paranoia . https://darthcoin.substack.com/archive?sort=new

geodesic 2y ago

Skepticism sundays have helped the Monero ecosystem foster a healthy self-critical perspective, which has ultimately made the project so much stronger over the years.

Thanks #[1] for pushing for this in the Bitcoin ecosystem too. We all want Bitcoin to succeed. For Bitcoin to cross the final hurdles, we need to take a constructive self critical view of Bitcoin's shortcomings. Only then can we hope to address them.

#[0]

Ortiz 2y ago

#[2]

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