Nostr Web Client

Unpopular opinion:

Being able to choose any custodian you wish on an open, global, permissionless network… is still multiple orders of magnitude better than having a single custodian on a single network controlled and KYC’d by a single network owner.

Of course, I get we don’t want to stop at “choose your custodian,” and the reliance on them is not ideal, but pretending it isn’t any better than the fiat shit we have come from is also deeply disingenuous.

Example: if a popular custodian started censoring or went down, every single person on Nostr could update to a new one (from any country in the world no less) in a matter of minutes, and continue receiving sats from the same people and on the same profile as if nothing changed… now do that with Twitter or Cash App.

MAHDOOD 10mo ago

This is the primary difference between gold and bitcoin. Under a gold standard, you’d hold a majority of your net worth at the bank because gold is too heavy and keep a small amount with you. That means your rug risk is high. Under a bitcoin standard, you’d hold a majority of your net worth yourself and hold a small amount with the custodian. The custodian holds a small portion of your bitcoin so the rug risk isn’t devastating. I’m pretty content with small to medium transactions being primarily done on custodial bitcoin wallets. I imagine that the fees you save will exceed the rug risk over time anyway.

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Discussion

Guy Swann 10mo ago

Yeah people completely discount that the ability to scale ownership of Bitcoin and gold are opposite. Sovereign ownership of billions in gold is 10000x worse than a few coins. Sovereign ownership of a billion in Bitcoin is easy, cheap, and can be protected with all sorts of unique multisig and timelock conditions that could complicate TF out of theft or confiscation.

If we don’t understand and account for, that then there’s no way to have a realistic view of the risk and/or how things are likely to unfold, imo.