Thread

the plan is apparently to never settle back to L1 😕

That's right, if your UTXO is linked to you (or a profile / behaviour pattern that eventually can be) then you don't own Bitcoin privately - the observer (surveillance state) knows what's yours. And some day when fiat isn't worth the paper it's printed on, they may want their share of your Bitcoin. Even assuming Lightning is private (which is probably quite an assumption) your channel will eventually close, revealing gains. - I think what you're getting at The solution is to make the shift to only(or mostly) spend and receive within in the private layer 1 (Monero). Or it's layer 2. This is the P2P counter-economy, a free stateless market. They can still see what goes in Fiat -> XMR (somewhat mitigated with P2P exchanges) so it's crucial that you're paid in XMR. The is what it actually means to "separate money from state". Earning, spending, and saving without permission. Bitcoin solves the inflation part (kind of) and the other part - the tax part, is easy done then L1 privacy is weak. "Privacy is for L2" is a lie. Unless they mean you won't actually own Bitcoin (liquid, ecash). Many more ideas, tangents, and naunces here, let me know what I got wrong.

Is this actually possible with something like lightning? Or can surveillance firms just force close (actively attack somehow) those pesky channels that have been open > 1 year and need to touch the global ledger before Apr 15th

Then it’s just paper

Yes all valid topics concerns my point wasn’t even specifically about gains. The increase in wrench attacks is also concerning trend. The fact that you reveal your address balance to the receiver and all previously linked transactions is something to be concerned about.

Finances are inherently a private matter it is completely natural to not want to reveal financial information to third parties bitcoin reveals a lot especially if you are “all in” which makes me particularly concerned that the maxi group aren’t more privacy focused.

I came to the conclusion that most so called "maxis" signed up after 2017. They are in the game long enough (8 years) to have a steadyfast Bitcoin identity. They have distinct personalities from OGs and they won't even understand the philosophically routed messages when OGs are talking. Many of those maxis came for fiat NGU. They didn't look for better money first. They were drawn in by price and researched later That's very much expected at later stage mass adoption. Many got burnt with shitcoin endeavours. Learned the hard way and found their exit in a monoculture thought process (until they fail again). Because it's their thinking that is misguided. Maxis are the plebs of the Bitcoin world. One needs true aspiration (sacrificing one's identity) to transcend ones existence. Fiat NGU personal gains are just a giant distraction. Funny enough most of the maxis haven't yet seen the expected fiat gains. Not to speak about purchasing power vs gold. Once you understand that you'll get your water from a pure spring and not some broad river down the valley you understand why maxi talk is the pollutant of the Bitcoin movement. Without doubt there have been Feds involved in fostering and amlplifying the toxic culture that leads to degradation and lack of self-reflectiom that tells us KYC IOU SBR ETF NGU means winning.

99% of LN liquidity pools is controlled by CEX and other custodial liquidity providers. It's that easy. All of them join with a money transmitter licence that means sharing data with chainanalytic companies. In that regard Tor is vastly different from the LN. Both are theoretically passively surveillabkr, but due to the centralisation effects (liquidity for routing), LN loses a lot of the properties and while Tor is more of an egalitarian network opening channels is a social selection process.

Wow I didn't know it was that bad. So basically even if many lightning nodes were sovereign, and therefore subsets of the network aren't easily mapped, then the large hubs could still "Know Your Channel". Is that the case? But how could it ideally work if we assume all non-KYC lightning nodes over Tor only (or even an ideal mixnet) and users are running their own lightning (not trusting some 3rd party w/ their data) It seems like this still suffers from channel closing attacks/ accidents revealing onchain the net balance.

Yes, this is why I think it's necessary to move completely towards all economic activity/transactions (L1 settlements) happening on the private by default chain. If XMR/BTC swaps or similar is used, as you mention with linking past Tx amounts, there is a lot of data leaked and easily correlated. Wallet fingerprints, netflows, timing, etc. And you basically lose more privacy as a function of how much economic activity still requires you to use those surveillance networks (btc or fiat).

That's the pseudo ideal network configuration. Everybody running their own LN node. Which means a lot of Bitcoin locked up for enabling only small payments. Or you end up again with some Bitcoin OGs running big centralised liquidity pools, putting a target on them for doing money transmission without a licence. The bigger the payment you want to make the more liquidity you need to route the transaction. There are ways to split transactions, but they come with their own failure rate. LN theoretically means a great expansion of functionality. I wouldn't just give up on it. But it really isn't the solution many people propagated it to be in 2016/17.

I think you nailed it to be honest