someone explain #ecash to me and what it solves
Discussion
It doesn't solve anything. Tools don't solve problems, people do. And #ecash is just a tool.
You can give someone that has never used bitcoin, a few pennies worth of ecash bitcoin to play with on the lightning network.
They can pay a lightning invoice. They can send bitcoin to a lightning address. They can zap people on nostr with it. They can try out NWC using cashu.me. They can perhaps receive a zap or two and get that experience too.
They won't need to install any apps, do any KYC, or provide an email address before being allowed to use it.
And maybe, just maybe, they may think this whole Bitcoin lightning shit is pretty cool and start buying some Bitcoin themselves, set up a non-custodial lightning wallet etc, etc,etc.
It's not like anyone's talking about putting your life savings into ecash. However, it sure as hell is the easiest way for someone to use ten cents worth of bitcoin for the first time.
Thanks for the reply. I’ll look into it more and maybe try it myself, but how does it differ from just using lightning? Is it custodial? Does it let you only send sats, or other currencies?
It's a bearer token. Works the same way as bearer bonds. The issuer of the bond, a bank usually, is the custodian of the money, and will hand that money over to whomever cashes in the bond, no questions asked.
The CashU mint that minted the token, will melt it back to lightning, with no questions like KYC or email asked the way other custodial lightning wallets are required to now days.
You can't give someone lightning Bitcoin if they don't have a lightning wallet. You can give anyone Cashu Bitcoin as nothing more than a string of text.
To spend it, they go to cashu.me or nutstash.app and paste in the text, and they can immediately spend the Bitcoin via the lightning network.
Setting up a non-custodial lightning wallet, using Phoenix or Zeus and an LSP, still takes effort and a significant investment to make the setup cost worth it.
And custodial lightnings wallets are now requesting full KYC.
Cashu is an alternative to a KYC custodial lightning wallet.
Bearer tokens are just a tool that in certain situations, can be useful.