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.
Discussion
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 I’m missing so I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about it. nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx nostr:npub1guh5grefa7vkay4ps6udxg8lrqxg2kgr3qh9n4gduxut64nfxq0q9y6hjy have been championing it so I figured there’s something to it, but what you’ve said here is accurate as far as I can see and that kind of makes me uneasy. In a “community bank” situation fedimints sound great, but from what I can see there’s nothing stopping someone from setting up a fractional reserve bank with a fedimint. The beauty of L1 bitcoin is that it to can’t be fractional and the monetary policy can’t be messed with. We seem to be giving this up too easily for some reason. It’s odd to me. But if I’m 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.