It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around it. Not convinced centralisation is not a danger here. Or is it solely for small groups that can trust each other?
Please suggest an exhaustive read.
Discussion
the goal is to keep these custodians and your exposure to them small. the other goal is that you get damn good privacy and lightning interoperability.
the weird assumption people have about e-cash is that it's something bitcoin can do, but in truth there is no such limitation. the e-cash notes could be denominated in anything and interact with any system in existence.
Centralization is always a danger when a single entity grows too large, I agree. The philosophy, however, is to make it as easy as possible to set up a mint yourself. Think: for a company, a conference, a festival, a village, a community, a social network, a paid privacy service, ... so many applications. This is the mint side.
The wallet are built with the same principles: You can hold ecash at many different mints and with a click of a button transfer funds from one mint to another. You choose where you want to park your money.
Everything is fully interoperable through a shared consensus layer: Bitcoin Lightning
Thank you for you time and explanation, Calle!
This was pretty much my assumption, it’s just I am not yet “in a place” where I could implement this, so that’s probably the #1 hurdle for me to grokk the whole concept. Now it’s much more clear to me how useful this is. Kudos!