Nostr Web Client

Most activities happen off chain now, lightning is sucessfull and used in most mobile wallet, especially by begginers. But also the sad reallity that a large part of the activity stays within large exchanges without touching the blockchain.

I wouldn't be surprise if big exchanges would use huge (unannonced) lightning channels between them to transfer back and forth the sats of their users moving between platforms directly. Or at some point also USDT on Bitcoin Lightning if it get sucessful.

ede3d957... 9mo ago

Welcome to the age of custodial usage of Bitcoin.

Seriously examining the status quo.

1. Most people I know do not own any coins.

2. The majority of those who own coins don't use them.

3. The few who use them use it from one custodian to another or within a custodian like they would use fully KYC'ed PayPal

4. Then only me and some weired nostr dudes are left who (try to) use it non-custodially. Most of them use Monero nowadays (take a look at the stats)

Without non-custodial use BTC loses it's meaning.

If everybody in the system is optimising for off-chain solutions BTC will see a huge security problem in the not so distant future. That will create another shism between fixed supply coiners willing to sacrifice security and those who look for other solutions. The alternative is an exodus to a proven coin like Monero.

BTC doesn't exist in a vacuum and the pure existence of memecoins and pos coins should tell you that most don't know what this is all about. They don't care about decentralisation, they care about the lowest fees if the use it.

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Discussion

Eluc 9mo ago

Sad but probably true. I still have hope that it changes but if you do the maths, we cannot onboard the world on the Bitcoin blockchain, we cannot even onboard 1 billion people (10% of the earth population I would roughly assume) to self-custodial lightning as just by channel openning/closing we would not have any block space for everyone.

But if a majority of people and daily transactions use custodials, these custodials must still from time to time settle on chain and more importantly it will always allow any new person or entity with the knowleadge and wealth to run a custodial for anyone they please, with the need to ask for permission.

This mean that if you don't agree with the terms and conditions of the big custodial player, bank or others, that you use, you can always and very easily migrate to another one, even a small private custodial that you trust. And this already give much more hope than the current closed system that we are in with fiat.