Phoenix can't be mentioned in the same sentence as the others. It's an actual self-custodial lightning wallet that works, seamlessly. "Outrageous fees": as an experiment, I went through my last 5 transactions. Tx1: $2.22 fee: 14 sats 2: $142 fee: 643 sats 3: $141 fee: 641 sats 4: $586 fee: 2644 sats 5: (deposit on chain) $1555 fee: 210 sats. Does that seem outrageous to you? The $586 payment had a high fee of a little over $2, which is like 0.3%; Lightning is like that, it's percentage based. But "high": this is way lower than many other payment methods, and it's instant, sovereign and mainly private.

Overall it's crazy to me that for years now, every time I recommend Phoenix, saying the actual tradeoff is a slightly worse privacy model (but really not bad), I hear people dismiss it as "crazy fees". Just because immediate onboarding (which is a one-time event) to an actually self sovereign wallet costs a couple of bucks doesn't mean "crazy fees"! You don't get everything working perfectly for zero dollars, sheesh.

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Unfortunately, Bitcoiners can be stingy.

I ultimately think the graduated wallet approach with Cashu as the first step fixes all of these, from fees to privacy

I dont disagree with Phoenix for stress-free lightning use among people who understand the tradeoffs, buy my beef is with people who recommend it for an onboarding experience. The minute you have to explain the upfront cost to someone by mentioning channels when they have never even held their own bitcoin, you've already convinced them that lightning sucks. I'm talking about the scenario where you have to salt the pitch with "Hey I'd like to pay for this $8.00 burrito with bitcoin, and by the way, this first transaction and any subsequent larger transaction is gonna cost you more in fees than what you pay visa or square."

On the first part:

Bitcoin itself isn't a product .. but I'll guess you agree with me there and say "but a lightning wallet is, kind of, a product". I can agree at least in general that you have to or want to think like that. But then it's a matter of what's reasonable. There's that old saying "if you're not paying you're the product". I believe it applies here. What is wrong with paying $2 to get access to something that you can permanently use for sovereign, private, immediate payments? In reality that $1-2 is part of the series of fees you're going to pay over time. It's trivial. I honestly can't understand this point of view, at all.

On 'more than visa or square', lots to unpack, but, merchant pays and overall way more is paid. It's not sovereign, it's not private, and it doesn't settle for days. Completely censored. Only cheap because regulators corrupted to literally rob poor people without cards and give it to their customers. Not even available in some places.

If a person prefers 10c instead of 30c fee (or w/e) despite *all* of those things, then why are you 'pitching' to them?

Honestly I don't get why we get into convoluted trusted solutions (trust the statechain entity bro, trust the federation bro) when Phoenix exists.

People will freak out at the onboarding fee without realizing how cheap it is compared to the cost of DIY (I'm talking "mental cost"). IMHO there are 3 factors that can explain this:

- people don't understand how LN works and are afraid of using Phoenix (vs custodial solutions)

- people don't care about self-custody

- people don't use Bitcoin as payment enough to see the point of Phoenix.

Yes, all good points, but even technical or somewhat technical people seem to think it should be essentially free. I've never quite understood why that mentality is so prevalent.

Why should people care about all these things? Payments should be as straightforward as cash.

Agreed, that's why Phoenix tries to abstract pretty much everything away from the user. Maybe they could abstract even more things, but then since it's self custody there are things you **have** to tell the user. And when you charge them fees, users **want** to know how much and why. Seems to me that's the only two things Phoenix still explains in its interface.

isn't their own stated policy that they charge 1% of every transaction? it's weird that your transactions were all less than that

on LN only the sender pays 0.4%, 1% is only if you don't have liquidity

https://phoenix.acinq.co/faq

ok I misremembered, thanks

And they are very open about the fees.