People who don’t realize the problem of trust and custodianship is one directly proportional to the amount of value just really confuse me…
It makes perfect sense to me to have a hierarchy of risk/trust based on how much value is at stake:
• Large savings, planning for the future, major life purchases = on chain holding your keys, best as multisig, imo.
• Monthly expenditures and income, regular purchases, a few weeks worth of funds = Lightning non-custodial, your own node when possible, otherwise LSP on mobile (like BitKit, Phoenix, Breez, Blitz, Zeus, etc) is a perfectly reasonable trade off.
• Daily zaps, small amounts, playing with features, a few hours or a days worth of value = custodial Lightning, ecash, Liquid are all fine. Very little risk, can easily withdraw up a level to self custody Lightning if it grows too large.
The people who hyper focus on the bottom of the value totem and squeal that the system is “broken” or “doesn’t work” because a lot of people use a custodial service, are missing the forest for the trees, imo.
Of course, we would love to have perfect UX for self-custody from top to bottom, but in the meantime, there is nothing wrong with using custodians for explicitly low value payments and small amounts. In fact ecash is pretty dope in that scenario, because you get amazing privacy with it. This isn’t even a controversial take to me, yet it seems like it is to tons of other people. To the point that even noobs are made to feel guilty about it. Thats ridiculous, imo.
Analogy: It’s the difference between sitting on a bench with a stranger and leaving $20K in cash and asking them to “hold onto it” while you go buy a donut, or asking them to watch your cup of coffee. If you come back and your coffee is gone, you’ll be like “damnit”… and then get on with your life or go back into line and grab another. Spending more energy than it’s worth arguing and coming up with some brilliant way to keep your coffee chained down and secure on the bench, isn’t a huge priority. But securing the $20K in cash sure as hell is.
So anyway, if you have a node, run your own lightning, and can use NWC with something like nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm Go, definitely do it because it’s awesome. But if you are using a custodian for some small payments, a Lightning address, or to zap people and you understand the risk you are taking, then that’s perfectly fine too and you don’t have to feel guilty about it like you’ve “sinned.” Just withdraw to your keys when you look at the amount and think “it would suck to lose this.”
Just my 2 sats
