It’s fair, I assume a lot of people are bots too, but I like lemmy because it’s mostly not bots :).

You can not send the BTC to just about anybody. Only to people with whom you have a channel open. If you want to send to anybody you need to hop through other channels using middlemen. That sounds very similar to the function of a bank.

You are right, if you want to send directly from your wallet to another user’s wallet with no middlemen, you need to have a channel open with that user, which you totally can and will save you on fees in the long-term if you transact with that person frequently. You can also send funds to any other person on lightning via these middlemen. The middlemen don’t have custody of the funds, they can’t block/reverse/do anything with the transaction aside from just forward it along. You can choose who those “middlemen” are, they are usually selected based on the lowest expected fee. They route data around, if they are banks, then so are other Bitcoin nodes you connect to on main chain. But we don’t think of them as banks right? They just relay data around and they’re decentralized. You are right that they share a similar function of routing payments, the difference is in how they do that and who controls what parts of that process. Banks have immense power over your funds. Lightning nodes you route a payment through have none and anybody can run one.

I’m not a bot, I’m just an idiot.

It’s not instant it takes a long time until enough confirmations have been done. It’s not even clear how many confirmations are enough.

You’re thinking of main chain (which takes 10 minutes for the next block), though I would take a zero-conf transaction in any situation that isn’t moving more money than a day’s labor. Lightning is instant and uses main chain for security but does settlement/transaction data off-chain.

Lightning network is literally a traditional bank transaction mechanism on top of bitcoin.

It’s not, you don’t need a bank to use it. Lightning is Bitcoin. You lock up BTC in a lightning channel, you can then send that BTC to anybody via lightning, and when you close your channel, you get the appropriate amount of BTC back. You can run a lightning node on a phone, a “routing” node on a raspberry pi, it’s just as decentralized and trustless as the main chain is. You can open a channel directly w the person you’re transacting with or you can forward the transaction through other channels/nodes, all trustlessly, all instantly, all automatically. Nobody ever has custody of the funds aside from you and your intended recipient.

If you are arguing for using lightning transactions, what is the point of bitcoin in the first place?

Main chain and lightning have different use cases. Use main chain for long-term storage of funds or large transactions. Use lightning for everyday spending. Main chain secures lightning transactions. Main chain is layer one, lightning is layer two, it’s possible there will be more layers, just like SMTP is built on TCP which is built on Ethernet or whatever.

fees are huge and will only increase in the future.

Main chain fees are around $1.50 for the next block, which is still cheaper than a bank wire or other equivalent payment methods in many situations. You’re right though, they are expected to increase as adoption increases, but lightning has scaled that available blockspace several orders of magnitude. Lightning fees are <1% in almost all instances and aren’t expected to increase since they are not tied directly to main chain fees and no mining is required. A lightning transaction uses about as much CPU power as sending an e-mail. A single main chain transaction can open a lightning channel. You can have billions of transactions inside a lightning channel.

For those who don’t know the actual real life use case, Bitcoin has been around for 15 years, it has a real life use case:

I can send money, with my android phone, from my couch, in my underwear, to anybody else on planet earth who also has an android phone and a halfway reliable internet connection. The transaction is not only sent, but actually settles, in under a second with Bitcoin lightning. And I pay pennies in fees. No going to the bank, no bank holidays, no paying wire fees or making sure their bank can talk to my bank. It’s just simple and instant and it works. It doesn’t matter if they are a dissident or if their country doesn’t allow women to own bank accounts, the transaction goes through anyways. In many countries, their app can also instantly convert that BTC into the currency of their choice and deposit it to their bank account. That’s assuming they have access to stable banking infrastructure, which billions of people do not.

Bitcoin has delivered on its promise of being a currency with a capped supply (21 million coins) and transaction system consistently for 15 years without a single hack, without a single hour of downtime, without a single hiccup. It just works.

You can argue that Bitcoin isn’t better than <insert local currency and transmission system>. You can argue that there are “better” solutions. But it has a clear use case. I use it on a daily basis and it has a fifteen year trend of continued growth whether you are looking at total market cap (bigger than Sweden’s GDP), number of nodes, number of transactions, whatever.

For more information and FAQs/myths, check out http://bitcoin.rocks

If you can do a P2P transaction like that, you need either a central server or a blockchain or equivalent to prevent double-spends. There is no other way. Satoshi’s innovation for Bitcoin was developing a system (blockchain) that can do this without a central server.

and technology which they can’t censor or control (lemmy/mastodon/ap, nostr, bluesky, freenet, hyphanet, matrix, tor, i2p, etc)

Nobody’s gonna make you, unlike a CBDC.

Bitcoin’s protocol has not meaningfully changed in 15 years. In terms of stability, in the crypto space, you literally cannot beat that. It will continue doing its thing so long as a few computers in the world still run the protocol.

Ethereum is centralized AF. The majority of the supply was sold during the pre-mine, and now that “proof of ownership” runs the network, the risk of a 51% attack is significant. Unlike in PoW systems, once a 51% attack happens, it can happen indefinitely there there is no imposed cost after the start of the attack. Bitcoin has no pre-mine and has been issued fairly and transparently. The majority of Eth’s nodes are hosted in one of like three corporate datacenters because the hardware required to run a full node has gotten ridiculous. You can say it’s “secure enough” or “decentralized enough”, but not that it’s “more secure” or “more decentralized” than Bitcoin, because it simply isn’t. Their L2s are an absolute mess, some of them are incredibly centralized, Polygon last I checked had 15 nodes controlling the entire network. Meanwhile, you can run a full Bitcoin node on a laptop from 10 years ago and a lightning node on an Android phone.

Once you start to look at all these coins aside from Bitcoin, all of them, without exception, have traded decentralization (and therefore security) for transaction speed. Now that Bitcoin lightning is out and mature, transaction speed and chain capacity is no longer the limiting factor. Those other coins have no reason to exist.

Monero is cool, its main pitch is privacy. Bitcoin’s privacy continues to get better, I expect that trend to continue. Bitcoin has a conference like every month, there is a massive pool of dev talent and funding. Lightning was released 5+ years ago, Monero doesn’t even have an L2 and without an L2 it cannot scale, and there’s not even an L2 in the developer roadmap. You can’t put everything on chain forever, and the bigger the chain gets, the more centralized it becomes, period. With no L2, transactions are slow and fees will increase as blockspace competition increases. Lightning can make transactions in under a second for pennies in fees since fees are not tied directly to blockspace.

Stablecoins are the worst of crypto and central banking combined.

• They are centralized, even more centralized than central banks since they are run by a single company not an board appointed by an elected government
• They can rug you at any time
• They only have value because they are “pegged” to a certain currency and the “backing” must exist to maintain that peg.
• Their source of the backing is often “trust me bro”
• Even if the backing was solid, market shocks and other problems can reduce the value of that backing, leading to them being insolvent and the stablecoin losing its value. And guess what, it wasn’t insured!
• They are often poorly regulated or unregulated entirely, so you have no reason to trust their claims and probably can’t seek any real remedy if they are lies
• They are, at best, pegging their value to a currency which is designed to lose 2-3% of its value per year due to inflation

Several of them have already collapsed spectacularly. More will in time. Avoid stablecoins.

https://algora.io/

Can you imagine, if we gave people rights?! Like free speech? Or the right to not have their house raided by the government without cause? My god they’d probably abuse those too! We should take them all away just to be safe :p

Please show me the crypto that just has the stability needed to be used as day-to-day currency

Bitcoin is already more stable than most national currencies and gets past the issue where you have to trust a central bank to correctly regulate the production of currency. Ask anybody in Argentina, Turkey, or Zimbabwe how much they trust their national currency. You can use Bitcoin as an everyday currency without holding onto it, plenty of people do this, particularly since it’s simply better for international transactions than many alternatives. Bitcoin gets more stable with time as more people use it.

All currencies experience volatility. People in some countries are very lucky to have a “stable” currency to use. But due to its inflationary nature, currencies like the EUR and USD are designed to lose value over time. 2-3% per year in good years. How had the purchasing power of that currency held up in recent years? Because Bitcoin has held up pretty well. Volatility has many sources, not all of which can be controlled. Bitcoin fixes the total supply in circulation which helps control at least one of those variables. If I have to pick between a currency that is guaranteed to lose value and a currency which may gain or lose value, the choice is pretty clear to me.

Not even accounting for ease of use, wide adoption etc., which none of them have,

Bitcoin’s user base, transaction volume, total market cap, number of full nodes etc, on average trend have increased or improved year after year for 15 years. You can send money to anybody on planet earth with a cell phone and a halfway reliable internet connection in under a second for pennies in fees. And it’s as easy to use as Venmo. The dollar can’t do that, it needs a crazy complex series of international agreements and banks to make happen and it’s expensive and slow. Nobody’s making people use Bitcoin, in fact, there are often some hurdles to doing so, but they choose to because they see some value in doing so. But who knows, maybe on year 16 you’ll finally be right and people will finally realize it’s useless and stop using it!

If only there was some other technology that came along that could :(

CBDCs are coming whether you like it or not and a GNU Taler based payment system is currently our best mitigation strategy against them.

The best mitigation strategy is to refuse to use them and to point out when systems, like Taler, are actively working to further their introduction of use. Using your national currency is mandatory to pay taxes, it’s not mandatory for anything else in most countries. We have the option to opt out, just like we do with every other privacy-attacking technology. Assuming it’s inevitable is how they win.

tbh this should be pinned

Bitcoin solved the “move money from A to B securely, internationally, quickly” problem 15 years ago. Taler strikes me in the most generous terms as a new attempt as an unimaginative effort to re-envision the banking system that existed before that watershed moment. We have instant, international settlement, we have that technology, it’s here, it’s mature, it works, it continues to get better, it has a market cap higher than Sweden’s GDP, and the average long-term trend has been growth no matter what way you slice it. It’s already more widely used and reliable than most national currencies. And it solves the delivery problem.

Taler is explicitly positioning itself as a better international payment standard to prevent central bank digital currencies from taking that role

From the Taler FAQ:

The exchange would be operated by a bank or in cooperation with a bank, and that bank would hold the funds in escrow respectively on an internal settlement account. Note that this bank could be a regular bank or a central bank for a central bank digital currency. Irrespective of this, the bank would fall under the relevant financial services regulations, which is one reason why consumers can rely on the conversion of Taler coins into normal bank money.

That doesn’t sound like opposing a CBDC to me, it sounds like explicitly building infrastructure for its existence. To review, Taler is

• Money I don’t control (held by another entity) of a money supply I don’t control (can be printed at will by government)
• That can’t be used internationally
• That is funded/sponsored by the EU, which wants to push a CBDC
• That has built in support for the concept of money expiration

You ever wonder why GNU Taler for some reason seems to be everywhere? Seems to have like advertising money to be everywhere, unlike basically every other GNU project? Because it’s a backdoor to a central bank digital currency (CBDC) which will be one of the greatest threats to personal liberty and freedom in our lifetime. That’s why you’ll see “Funded by the EU” and a host of banks listed on their funders page. You know, the same EU that wants chat control.

Money you can only spend certain places? A CBDC can do that! Money that expires if you don’t spend it fast enough? A CBDC can do that! Money that can disappear if you decide to be a dissident? A CBDC can do that too! But don’t take my word for it, ask Taler’s FAQ:

Taler e-money is issued with a validity period. One month before the expiration date, you wallet should automatically exchange any digital cash that is about to expire for new digital cash with an extended validity period. However, if your wallet is offline for an extended period of time, it may be unable to do so. Ensure your wallet is regularly online to avoid losing money due to expiration!

We believe the European Electronic Money Directive provides part of the regulatory framework a Taler exchange with coins denominated in Euros would have to follow.

Oh, and it doesn’t work for international transfers either. And it’s going above and beyond to make sure you’re only “private” under certain conditions:

As a payment system must comply with local laws in order to operate legally, GNU Taler must be designed to comply with these requirements. GNU Taler must provide an audit trail for investigators operating under the law. Furthermore, we consider levying of taxes as beneficial to society, and fair taxation requires income transparency. Thus, GNU Taler must enable authorities to track income.

Weird. I didn’t see anything in the Bitcoin source code about that, but apparently Taler thinks it’s their moral responsibility to make sure the authorities have total financial surveillance over their subjects. Taler, in this description, offers less privacy than cash or even a typical bank account. And their FAQ deliberately spreads FUD about Bitcoin. From their FAQ

It would be possible, however, to withdraw coins denominated in Bitcoin into a Taler wallet (with an appropriate exchange), which would give some benefits over plain Bitcoin, such as instant confirmation times.

Wrong. Fud. Bitcoin lightning offers instant confirmation times, fully settled, instant confirmation times. Taler isn’t self-custody. Putting Bitcoin in a taler wallet means trusting Taler and co not to rug you, no thanks. Taler isn’t international, Taler requires KYC to use, it’s worse than cash. Unlike Taler, your Bitcoin can’t be programmed by the government to “expire” if you don’t use your public assistance or wages in time. We all have to do our part to keep the economy going!

GNU Taler seems like the final pleas of a desperate soon-to-be-ex, “I’ll stop, I promise! I’ll do better this time, I’ll even give you some privacy! Just don’t leave!”. But it’s not about the privacy, is it? Really? It’s about the lack of trust, the lack of sovereignty. People have lost trust in governing institutions, they have seen the value of their currency inflated away no matter which party is in charge, they have seen massive privacy violations again and again, they have seen the slow but steady creep of authoritarianism and state control over our lives, they have had to fight EU chat control year after year, and they are opting out of these systems through decentralized, trustless alternatives. The beauty of Taler, of course, from the perspective of the state, is that it enables these system to provide us with “privacy” while still maintaining total state control and centralization. Decentralized identity credentials are the future, not centralized ones. Decentralized currencies are the future, not centralized ones. The future is here, and this is the last gasp of a dying system trying to keep you ensnared in its web of control.

Final overview:

• International transactions to anywhere on earth? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Money that doesn’t expire? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Wallet can safely go offline without losing funds due to expiration? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Money you can use even if you are a dissident and the govt wants to shut down your account? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Fully self-custody? You control the money, not anybody else? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• 100% FOSS? Anybody can run a node/be a full network participant? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler (must be approved by govt)
• Can be used without trusting a centralized entity? ✅Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Will work even if EU government collapses or your country gets kicked out? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• High degree of privacy (when used properly)? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Instant settlement? ✅ Bitcoin ✅ Taler
• Known, auditable supply which can’t be manipulated by money printing or a 2-3% “inflation target”? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Able to use without providing ID? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler
• Not part of financial surveillance infrastructure wet dream that EU wants? ✅ Bitcoin ❌ Taler

tbh I haven’t played around w them much so idk

Is nobody going to point out that the DNC already had a primary? And that by replacing the candidate last minute, against the will of their voters, the DNC would be acting incredibly undemocratically? Do you want your core voting block to start voting in republican primaries instead? Because throwing out their primary vote is how you get that to happen.

The DNC had a primary, there were multiple candidates, Biden lost the primary in American Samoa. I voted for Biden, he won, if the party elite swap him out last minute regardless of what their primary said, why would anybody care to vote in their primaries?

Anonymity is also crucial for democracy. Anonymity is required for sources to leak material to the press about corruption and malfeasance. Anonymity is required for people to speak honestly and freely. When the government turns against its critics, anonymity is required for those critics to speak safely.

You can still investigate crimes without eliminating the right to privacy or anonymity. It requires talking to people, finding witnesses, and doing good old detective work. The simple fact of the matter is that police have more tools today to fight crime than they ever have in human history. All of our communications, our phones and CCTV tracking our every move, etc yet crime still happens. Most crimes go uninvestigated and unprosecuted despite this wealth of invasive access. We were told if we traded our privacy and liberties we would be safe from crime, but the truth is that criminals will still crime and rich and powerful people will still get away with crime. The only difference now is that we lost our freedom and privacy along the way. And every day, we are told we need to give up even more freedom and then really, truly, the system will find those bad guys and eliminate them. Except the bad guys are often the ones who run and benefit most from the system. And they’ve gone so far to convince much of the population that doing things privately (like making transactions) is in and of itself a sign of criminal behavior or intent.

People 100 years ago in the US would scoff at the idea that the government would be able to monitor every financial transaction they made or read all their mail. Yet all day I see people in these comments saying how this is normal, needed even, for society to operate well.

One option is to ask open source language models to make lessons/quizzes/etc for you