[arcticbull]

Custodial solutions offer zero benefits over putting your money in a bank - and have a ton of drawbacks associated with Bitcoin people only overlook because of those benefits - and the L1 is so slow that any subset that wants to open a channel brings it to its knees.

It's not a real solution. It's something coiners distract people with whenever someone points out the obvious and glaring flaws of the L1.

[edit] To me it's pretty telling that critics offer specific quantifications (X people requires Y time) and proponents say "only some people need it!" - how many, exactly? How full do you anticipate blocks being with other things? How long is too long to open a channel? Currently it sounds like a Soviet phone line - better put in a request now otherwise you might be in your 80s before it gets installed.

[librecoiner]

I disagree. Custodial Lightning Bitcoin is still way better than a bank account.

- You can't open a bank account without KYC - You can send money without asking permission - You can receive money without asking permission - You can send money *privately* (onion layer) - You can send money around the globe faster - You can always take it on-chain on L1 via a submarine swap

[cowtools]

Custodial bitcoins defeat the entire purpose of bitcoin. The fact that you don't understand that speaks volumes about the bitcoin community.

[librecoiner]

I don't use Lightning. That doesn't prevent me from seeing how Custodial Lightning solutions like "BitcoinBeach" in ES are miles better than Banks.

[cowtools]

custodial ownership of bitcoins is a product of bitcoiners' defeatism: it only makes sense if you just want to make money and no longer care about the original values of bitcoin.

[preseinger]

KYC is good, not bad.

[lumannnn]

Look into Taproot.

Once adoption and implementation spreads, you'll realize you can open multiple channels with one on-chain transaction.

This is an evolving space and scaling happens already.

But sure, you can stick to the traditional monetary system where only a select few control the rules.

You are free to adopt Bitcoin. No one will force you :)

[arcticbull]

Again, please specify exact quantities, I did, it's the least you can do.

> But sure, you can stick to the traditional monetary system where only a select few control the rules.

No, a body accountable to Congress (the Fed) which publishes quarterly audits is responsible for the currency. They act on behalf of the American people. As opposed to an un-elected, un-accountable cluster of core contributors and mining pools who seem to operate principally to the benefit of North Korea, ransomware operators, Ponzi schemers and various other kinds of criminals - financial and otherwise.

> You are free to adopt Bitcoin. No one will force you :)

And yet, if you hold an S&P 500 ETF you're exposed to this toxic nonsense via index components. If you're a pensioner in Quebec, you're exposed to this toxic nonsense via their stake in Celsius.

[alchemist1e9]

You seem to have a very US centric worldview. Maybe ask some Turkish savers how they feel, or any number of endless examples worldwide where saving in their own government fiat isn’t a good idea.

[plankers]

you can bet your bottom dollar there are some nerds in Sri Lanka who are very happy to own bitcoin right now. they'll be able to spend it as soon as the electricity comes back up.

[arcticbull]

I think we can all agree that they'd be strictly better off with a digital dollar substitute like USDC than with Bitcoin, as of course they'd be down bad with Bitcoin.

[ooaa]

Either lose all/most your money to inflation or risk not being able to spend money temporarily.

[acdha]

The big question there is whether or not their government allows businesses to operate outside of their control. I doubt many Turks would risk jail time by using a system which provides their government with a full transaction history, especially given the volatility - if you converted lira into Bitcoin a year ago, you’d be about even with not doing anything. If you bought 6 months ago, you’d have 50% losses.

[once_inc]

> As opposed to an un-elected, un-accountable cluster of core contributors and mining pools.

These people don't control bitcoin. Developers and mining pool operators have their purposes in the network (designing new features and timestamping transactions respectively), but it's the users and node operators that validate the rules of the system. A code change to inflate bitcoin by 100% will never be adopted by node operators unless nakamoto consensus is reached.

[once_inc]

I'd like to counter that with the opinion that for most people, controlling their own keys isn't a priority. These are the people that don't even know there isn't any gold backing the dollar, or where money comes from. For these people, Bitcoin offers the option of digitally native money that is well suited for a rapidly digitizing world. They won't feel any problems holding their bitcoin in a walled garden maintained by banks or money transfer companies, and won't consider the counterparty-risk as something they need to be worried about.

[arcticbull]

Why would the dollar be backed by gold? You know that ended in 1933 right? I'd say 89 years is long enough for folks to have figured it out, but I'm always open to surprises.

[once_inc]

Please re-read my post. I specifically speak of people using money without being aware of all the specifics. Noting that the dollar is not backed by gold.

That ended in 1971 by the way, when Nixon ended the gold standard for the US dollar because the government needed money to pay for the war in Vietnam.

[arcticbull]

Double-check what happened in 1971. FDR took the US off the gold standard in 1933. From this point forward until present, there was never again domestic convertibility of notes for gold. Nixon ended Bretton Woods (which started in 1944) - but that pertained solely to international convertibility of notes for gold in foreign exchange. It was not the gold standard. It was occasionally referred to as the 'gold exchange standard.'

It's just popular to ascribe this to Nixon because you know, Nixon bad. Watergate, etc. But not everything a bad leader does is bad - Nixon gave us the EPA too. Stopped rivers catching on fire and everything.

Money is already digital.

[alchemist1e9]

> Money is already digital.

We know, which being in a centralized MySQL database at the Fed made bailing out all the US elites in 2008 very easy.

[arcticbull]

The Fed didn't bail out anyone in 2008. Treasury did. Also, the bail-outs weren't grants, they were loans, and they have been re-paid yielding $110B in profit so far with plenty more to come. [1]

I was opposed to bail-outs in 2008 personally, but in retrospect it's very difficult to look back and say that it was anything other than an unequivocal success. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were saved and it was super profitable. With that in mind, I'd suggest a new stalking horse.

Also of note, I said the dollar was digital, not that it was centralized. The Fed doesn't have a central representation of all dollars in existence, the M numbers are estimates. The Federal Reserve System is a federated system, and money is created when loans are taken out at retail banks.

[1] https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

[alchemist1e9]

Maybe you are missing the point in regards to what “money” you put in your bank. Coiners can also use MySQL but they just won’t be recording entries relative to another master MySQL database of the central bank and that does seem like a decentralized system with government removed. Technologically it is an upgrade, even if eventually, yes, people will need banks for everyone to use it. But guess what they don’t need anymore …