Does this include Fedimint? Is ecash considered a token?
Discussion
Nope. eCash isn't a "blockchain asset". eCash projects don't attempt (and cannot) to siphon value away from users via token appreciation. That's the only reason blockchain tokens exist and what makes them a scam.
No.
No. Ecash is bitcoin. What it calls ātokensā are simply redeemable amounts of sats that are held in custody by the mint.
What about lighting? Since it holds zaps and not bitcoin?
yeah. this is wrong.
Cool. Iām still trying to wrap my mind around it. It made me nervous when I first hear about it because it seemed like a step in the wrong direction (back to a fiat world of fractional reserve banking), but I did some more research and understand things like this will be necessary as transaction fees go up, especially in developing countries.
Hal Finney predicted this. Itās another go at David Chaumās vision of portable private ecash, but backed by bitcoin instead of a company. Iām excited for it to take off.
"backed by bitcoin" != bitcoin. this is the difference people need to understand but few seem to or just don't seem to want to talk about this aspect. however, it's an important distinction for people to consider when determining their threat model and tolerable risk level.
Second layers will never have the same properties of on-chain bitcoin. Thatās just something you need to accept if you want the functionality of Lightning or ecash. Itās still bitcoin in the sense that it doesnāt employ an alternate blockchain with a pre-mined token of questionable supply. Not everyone on earth can own a UTXO. Scaling is the only path to grow the network and user base.
see, this is the issue. lightning *is* bitcoin. it is built on top of bitcoin primitives and at no time are you exchanging anything but sats. ecash is the opposite. it _can_ be backed by bitcoin, but there's nothing about it that says it needs to. it is supposed to be a a voucher for some amount of bitcoin but doesn't have a verifiable supply. so the value of it could fluctuate depending on the whims of the mint key holders. i'm not sure why it having a separate chain is what makes something bitcoin or not. if that's the case, then the dollars in my pocket are also bitcoin. i think that chaumian mints and fedimints more specifically are a great solution for facilitating quick, easy, and private payments between individuals. however, it has nothing to do with bitcoin from an end user perspective, and i feel that bitcoin should be completely removed from the conversation around it.
This was exactly my thought when I first heard about it. It feels fiat by definition and to be honest I had a very strong negative reaction to that. I slowed down and told myself there must be something Iām missing so Iāve been trying to learn as much as I can about it. nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx nostr:npub1guh5grefa7vkay4ps6udxg8lrqxg2kgr3qh9n4gduxut64nfxq0q9y6hjy have been championing it so I figured thereās something to it, but what youāve said here is accurate as far as I can see and that kind of makes me uneasy. In a ācommunity bankā situation fedimints sound great, but from what I can see thereās nothing stopping someone from setting up a fractional reserve bank with a fedimint. The beauty of L1 bitcoin is that it to canāt be fractional and the monetary policy canāt be messed with. We seem to be giving this up too easily for some reason. Itās odd to me. But if Iām missing something here, please someone correct me. I want to learn and do recognize that we need something like fedimints / lightning for bitcoin to scale to 8 billion people.
nostr:npub1t0nyg64g5vwprva52wlcmt7fkdr07v5dr7s35raq9g0xgc0k4xcsedjgqv made a great post on stacker news not long ago discussing fedimint. if you're trying to understand it a bit, it's a great bit of info. https://stacker.news/items/395461