I changed my mind. cashu is bitcoin.
Login to reply
Replies (151)
Trigger warning
Lightning is a form bitcoin with a different risk profile.
Cashu is a form of lightning with a different finality profile.
unilateral exit and payment finality matters most
though I own my sats, and force closes are an expense of using the protocol.
How does a user know which mints they can trust? What safeguards are built in to prevent losing funds due to bad actors? These are still unanswered questions in my book.
Once a mint rugs someone they loose all credibility… and then nobody would want to use that mint anymore. So it’s in their best interest not to rug because then nobody would use that lint anymore.
Use it for small amounts only
Like spending cash in your wallet.
You wouldn’t walk around with thousands of dollars in your wallet because you could get robbed
It’s not a savings account
But also you could run your own mint and not have to trust anyone
Or you could diversify across hundreds of mints.
Or your local bitcoin meetup could run a mint and you know those people in real life so if they rugged you . You could r mess up their reputation….
Technically it's a bitcoin substitute. Tokens. Warehouse receipts ostensibly backed by full reserves.
It's called free banking.
😂 it's actually a bitcoin substitute to be very technical. Warehouse receipts.
But what if they don't give a shit about reputation? Maybe not the current big ones like minibits, coins etc.
But the future ones. Imagine Shitcoiner setting up cashu mints and after a long time and a certain amount of Bitcoin, people hold on the mints, they rug. Maybe got millions of dollars, enjoying life and setting up new mints.
Like shitcoin ICOs back in 2017 or so but with mints?
Would that be possible?
As if Bitcoin gives a shit about who and what anyone is thinking about it.
Exactly.
Here’s a scenario:
I’m a brand new ecash user. I download wallet called Joe’s Ecash-O-Rama. It’s really slick and has good UX. I proceed to use it for a few weeks, get a bunch of zaps, onboard some friends and family members onto it. Then one day Joe disappears, his node goes offline, the wallet is unreachable, and everyone’s sats are gone. Now, not only do I feel scammed, but so does everyone I convinced to use it.
SO YOU LIMIT THE MAX SIZE TO BE REPRESENTATIVE TO THE EQUIVALENT OF SOMETHING LIKE 5,000 USD SOMETHING FOR TOTAL MINT SIZE…??
Is your CAPS LOCK key broken?
“YOU LIMIT”
Who is “YOU”?
How does the user know what the mint’s limits are or if they’re being honest about it?
I’ve got no problem with 100k sats with Minibits
That one is unique because it’s a mint and a wallet also
But yea I wouldn’t have a lot of sats with a mint I didn’t trust…
I have some mints that I use that haven’t rugged me yet, but I’m willing to risk small amounts of funds to test wallets so other users don’t get rugged.
As a bitcoiner, it’s healthy to have trust issues, and this is something that usually has to be learned by touching the stove a few times.
I wouldn’t be a mint or a custodian for anyone outside my immediate family. I never want that responsibility.
When you click on the mint it gives you all the info like this and shows the limits:
How is that information provided to the user, and can it be faked? I legitimately don’t know enough about how the protocol works.
Alright, bud. Good chat but I’m tired of reading your ALL CAPS replies.
This is how retarded cashu is. Joe doesn’t have to run a node to run a mint. Cashu is not dependent on Bitcoin in any way. Lightning addresses are the only optional field to add Bitcoin support in any way to a mint. That lightning address can be a custodial or non-custodial. That means someone could run a mint with a wallet of satoshi address. Which means the mint operator themselves can be rugged by the custodial wallet provider they used as a funding source for their mint.
Is that max amount of one transaction? So I can do a transaction of max 1kk sats but I could do 10x 1kk sats txs and hold 10kk sats on that mint?
Huh ?
On that particular mint the limit is 1 million sats
To deposit or withdraw or spend
No not for on transaction
As many transactions as you wanna do
That’s just saying you can’t have more than a million sats on there basically
Not for one* tx
Lol
Y’all are so worried about getting rugged your missing the whole point
I’ve been using ecash for a long time and never lost a single sat
But even if I did get rugged it wouldn’t be enough to even make me upset
My life savings is onchain
And I have lightning channels also
But there are very good use case for ecash y’all are ignorantly missing
Sometimes lightning doesn’t work,
It’s hard onboarding new users to lightning because it comes at a cost to open a channel.
Not everyone will run a node,
Most probably never will lol
If the government shuts down the internet
Or there is a power outage
Or if you just want private small transactions
It’s wayyyy better for a normie to use than something like primal kyc wallet
Or strike to cash app
It gets people away from that kyc trash
But it’s retarded
Ok ✅
answered many times. it's ok if you don't like the answers.
this is what @Max calls it
Instead of being defensive, can you link one of your replies here for those of us who don’t have a photographic memory of your notes or may have missed it?
i’m not defensive, people have answered you.
in short: only use mints you trust.
What a complete non-answer.
don’t get defensive
New users don’t know who or what to trust. That’s why it’s easy to rug them, whether it be in shitcoins or ecash, or scammy custodial wallets. Nobody has ever provided a satisfactory answer to this.
what’s your solution? you never answer
I don’t have one, that’s why I haven’t been comfortable recommending it to new users, based on personal experience randomly losing sats to dead ecash mints.
maybe a custodial wallet like coinos
I don’t recommend Coinos either because of their history of security issues.
ok, let's wait a few years maybe someone will come up with something
You’re probably being sarcastic but I actually don’t think that’s a bad idea. It’s not like there’s a tidal wave of MoE retail adoption just waiting for the right wallet to show up.
What domain do you trust?
Cashu is a bank.
I just don’t want to see people I helped onboard get rekt. It’s a lot of responsibility.
It’s a very valid concern. And I keep getting pissed on for asking legitimate questions.
It’s weird. We went from “don’t trust, verify” to “only use mints you trust” and I’m just asking a basic question about how a new user with no experience would be able to decide which one to trust.
Yep. I’ve been trying to verify and get answers for months. I just get told I don’t do the work, but the reason I have the questions is because I did do the work. 🤷♂️
And apparently I’m an asshole for that.
I can't answer that guy because I've muted him in my clients but: nobody is pissing at you, you're probably just being annoying and people don't have time or don't want to engage with troll-like behavior. You ask, people answer. You troll or be a dick, people mute.
Nobody has to engage with you, really not hard to understand.
Can’t fix stupid
Untrue. But thank you. 🫡
I lost more money running a lightning routing node than with ecash lol
Cashu is NOT bitcoin. It is a shitcoin that you have to trust someone not to rug.
You know better.
Especially as a beginner opening and closing channels unknowingly
Someone can download fake sparrow wallet and lose their on-chain funds as well. Real bitcoin doesn’t sound safe either.
But you still need a routing node. So there is no escape 😂
Being a bitcoiner is basically a masterclass in loss.
Yes, but then your only point of failure is yourself.
I can run my own mint... For myself.
No one is rigging me but me.
Square launches the POS support for lightning payments for sellers tomorrow. I'm hoping we can hype it into a tidal wave.
Show me the demand, is all I’m saying.
Devs have even replaced nuts lost in the odd bug for helping to point out issues. An very honest bunch of devs with a bunch of honest users is a powerful force.
More options, the better.
OH, THANK YOU! IT'S MUCH EASIER TO WRITE LIKE THIS WITH CAPS LOCK!
It’s so true. 😅
Sounds extra special
In reality you would just be using 2 different lightning address and paying double the fees every time you want to sEnD nUtS 😂
I heard a shitcoiner say that same thing before 😆
Facts
Q: "How do I know which mints I can trust?"
A: "Only use mints you trust."
Mints that haven’t rugged me:
minibits.cash
lnvolts.com
21mint.me
I’ve also used lnserver.com, which at one point had a data error that caused me to lose some of my proofs, but they made good on it for me, and I trust them based on their reputation.
Run your own mint
So we’re back to telling noobs to run their own hardware again. Why bother running a mint for yourself, just run a Lightning node.
lol. no.
Will you run a node for Uncle Jim?
why would he trust my mint?
I do, but would only be an Uncle Jim for my immediately family. Never for anyone else.
That's fine, we don't need to know your running a mint
I’d rather help others become self-reliant than depend on me.
Agreed
I definitely believe that, I think this month I've paid like $50 to Zues LSP fees for constantly opening new channels🙄🙄
As much as I love the cypherpunk goals of ecash, I think most people are more likely to choose a custodial Lightning or layer 2 service from a company they’ve heard of rather than pick a mint out of a hat. It doesn’t mean anyone should give up on the dream, just take it with a dose of reality.
If you like lightning then go ahead and use it. If you want to use ecash then feel free. You want an onchain trasaction? Well and good. Why the fight man? You re free to use whatever you want according to your needs. SIMPLE!
Which mint to trust is the same as “trusting” which Bitcoin hot wallet or hardware to use—assuming you’re a regular pleb who isn’t versed enough to verify open-source code or hardware. It’s a mix of rating, recommendations, and trust built on proof of work.
I really like Minibits and Coinos Mint, and that’s what I recommend.
Calle has this project where it would use donation sats to move money between mints to constantly probe their liquidity.
Yes, I’ve contributed some sats to that project.
Agreed. And the trade offs are clear with Cashu:
-It’s a bank providing private and *offline* transactions.
- mints are easy to setup
- nonetheless, it takes time to build trust for people to join & use a mint of choice
- transactions between mints are facilitated by lightning (helps check fractional practices)
I'm going to try boosting demand. I agree that it likely won't be much initially...
🤨
it is indeed for one transaction. Mints do not know your balance
It's a privacy feature
YOU ARE MOST WELCOME 🤗
So it’s not a complete non-answer 😳
I think people are using in the wrong way these public cashu mints.
A good example of using cashu mint is @Cuba ₿itcoin.
They created a local community mint and promote it around their merchants and users. That add a good trust level and communication between users. I think this is the main utility for a cashu mint.
If you do not have a local community mint, and you have to use a random public one, then better use these lists and choose wisely:
- https://audit.8333.space
-
Use them with small amounts and do not keep everything in just one mint. I hope soon we will have multi-mint spending so will be easier to manage multiple mints.
Don't abuse these mints! I've seen people using them as coinjoin services... that's wrong. Moving around large amounts of sats through mints you are disrupting their liquidity with unnecessary transactions. Behind every mint is a LN node. Not all have a good management of liquidity and you will encounter problems, stuck funds, lost keys etc.
People must understand how mint tokens works, are not just some papers where it says "IOU x sats"... are more than that and are many technical details that cashu devs didn't explained to the end user so well. So do your own research and read how these cashu tokens works.
Bitcoin Mints
If you don’t know if you can trust the mint, you can’t trust the mint.
That’s the point.
2 options.
1) Find one you can trust with people you know.
2) start one (then it’s self custody bonus) and share with people you trust.
Are mints like federations for fedi?
he’s a concern troll
View quoted note →
how many sats are we talking? hundreds, thousands?
most cashu users dont have their own community's mint
A few thousand in all, as far back as Mutiny. I even lost over 1K to a fedimint once.
And that is a wrong approach.
I strongly encourage all knowledgeable bitcoiners to start building these local communities, being a local "LN bank" and "local cashu mint".
I wrote some guides about these aspects:
1. 
2.
Take the example of the @npub1kj4r...65u0 brazilian community
https://www.lnvoltz.xyz/en/brln-academy
BE THE CHANGE IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE CHANGE IN THIS FUCKED UP WORLD
DarthCoin Guides
Private banks over The Lightning Network
How to manage a Bitcoin LN routing node for a more private use as an “Uncle Jim” Bank for yourself, for your friends and family
DarthCoin Guides
Bitcoin adoption using ecash
A use case scenario for Ecash over Bitcoin LN, using Cashu mints. How can we bring more Bitcoin adoption to people that can’t afford to start wit...
Who, me? The guy who crash tests every wallet I can get my hands on with real sats (and sometimes loses them) so I can help other people not lose theirs? Sorry for looking out for new users, but that’s not gonna stop. People ask me questions and I try to find answers.
With regard to using a random public mint, personally, I wouldn't even bother with multiple mints. The "small amounts" rule is sufficient mitigation in my book.
I recently learned that mints will effectively invalidate tokens that have been dormant for a while, by design, in order to clear out tokens that are presumed abandoned and keep their database of outstanding tokens manageable (or maybe other reasons as well? 🤷♂️) What constitutes "dormant for a while" may be years, or it may be weeks, or it may be whatever. Presumedly, that policy is up to each individual mint.
For this reason, I think trying to manage "small amounts" of tokens across multiple mints is bound to be more trouble than it's worth.
It’s hard out there being a crash test dummy. 
False, Dan is a real one. He’s tests a ton of new wallets and software. Helps run and support or of the largest group of node operators I’ve found, for free. He’s told you where he actually lost Cashu nuts and yet all you can do is still call him a troll wtf?
All I can say is if you’re new here, remember: If you Don’t understand and can’t verify. Don’t trust.
Keep asking for help. There’s people out there like Dan that can help. Instead of calling you a troll.
you could just use lightning instead. But you know that.
I like to poke at things.
i don't know what has gotten into calle lately. also the note he quoted of yours is such a non-troll note... you gave a positive review of three mints 😆
Oh yea
So the limit is just saying you can’t deposit or send more than a million sats
Right?
guy has been commenting for ages, always the same questions that have been answered many times.
That’s what happens when you always get the same answer and it’s not sufficient.
I lost about 3k sats in the minibits mint
"Use it for small amounts only" - agreed. this is the key
"You wouldn’t walk around with thousands of dollars in your wallet because you could get robbed' - This is *mostly* a true statement; but it's a terrible analogy (which many people use)... unless the threat model is that you're worried about the dollars in your wallet becoming non-transferable regardless of your own actions.
how? the mint is up, did you try to restore from seed?
Yes and I just watched sats disappear doing that…
no calle. i met him on a sidewalk in nyc and we chatted and he was a good communicator and educator and it was clear as day to me at the time that he cared deeply and was earnestly enthused.
as far as im concerned: if he is not an asset no one is. a lot of time, dedication, and hard work.
that must be some bug, if the seed is correct, restore should work without issues. pls try again in cashu.me
I already have and that didn’t provide any better results…
then my guess is something else must be going on. restore is very reliable.
Idk from this experience I will have to disagree with you…
It didn’t work right…
Did you try higher intervalls while scanning?
There can be big gaps between unspent proofs (tokens) where no change existed before.
Yep
yes, the restore has a gap limit like with Bitcoin on-chain
which wallet were you using this seed with?
Yes. lightning invoices are limited to 1M sats
Zeus, but it’s happened before with other seeds in minibits wallet n mint…
I can only give my honest account. People who come to our meetups have practical questions about literally every topic you can imagine, and I try to find answers for them. It’s part of the learning process.
How are noobs expected to understand gap limits? I was told restoring a wallet was a foolproof process that works every time.
They never will
You get one chance with people, and if they think they’ve been rugged, they won’t come back. I still run into people all the time who are convinced Lightning is a scam because they had sats on BlueWallet before April 2023 and they went back to withdraw them and couldn’t, because the node had been taken down.
Absolutely correct…
Integrity is everything.
Don't trust, verify.
Making it about me doesn’t fix the inherent problems. I’m sure you’d much rather face these questions now when Cashu sill has a tiny user base rather than waiting until there a billion users trying to onboard. And I don’t believe I’ve heard anything about how mint capacity (not to mention trust) scales to meet that level of use.
But that’s the problem with cashu you have to trust it and you can’t verify it
yes, it's custodial
Make mints available to be audited, force them to show proof of reserves or something at least…
we’re open to contributions
i have no idea what we are talking about so i am recusing myself, only hopped on re: daniel, will say using the word "force" in any context is pretty not great tho
Thanks @nobody, appreciate the kind words! 🥰
Force may have been the wrong terminology to use… "giving the mint the opportunity to prove reserves" would have been the better wording.
cool! i gotcha now thank you
Not a problem you’re welcome
🔥🔥...🤝🔥🔥🔥❗️
AMEN 😌
🔥🔥🔥❗️✅️
I don't trust a crypto bank => same problems, and also
maybe in the (near) future higher risk🫥, than a traditional bank😓
I’m here to change that
Share my project with others and help me make it possible
cashu4community.xyz
Dont tell people what to do just because Lightning sucks ass.
fuck off bcasher
Dont have to be a bcasher to realize how much lightning sucks.
Been 3 times to el salvador and saw the disaster. Everyone uses trusted third parties. Wake up you moron.
This is a new perspective. I’ve never heard anyone say lightning “sucks ass”.
Could you explain your reasoning as to why you’ve come to this conclusion regarding lightning please?
What is a better solution than lightning?
I personally believe ecash via the Fedimint protocol is an excellent choice. There are tradeoffs to everything. But to say lightning “sucks ass” I’d say is a bit obtuse in your criticism.
Lightning may be no good for the implementation you’re looking for…that’s logical. But to say it “sucks ass” (overall) is a narrow viewpoint.
What disaster happened in El Salvador regarding lightning?
have you ever used it with a self custodial wallet?
Everybody uses custodial wallets, that means - not your keys, not your coins - you use a trusted third party which holds your coins and sees all your transactions.
This is not Bitcoin, this is a credit card. All advantages of BTC are gone.