It should be thought of as matters of degree of custody, degree of risk tolerance, separation of concerns and asymmetry of incentives.
The mint operator is incentivized to keep honest in order to continue receiving lightning revenues. One should not possess more than a few thousand sats in a cashu mint, or whatever amount you are tolerant to risk. You can offload your excessive balance into a self-custodial lightning wallet, such as Zeus. If you are a serious user, you can run your own mint - even one on your phone connected to your own lightning channels.
For onboarding users, using a centralized mint should be sufficient - because firstly, you aren't advocating any particular mint, and secondly, a new user shouldn't need to worry about self custody right out the gate because it's complicated, and thirdly, moving to true self-custody is part of the learning experience.
Alex Gleason (nprofile…ae9u)'s notion of creating Bitcoin wallets from the same seed as the nostr nsec does not solve the self-custody problem because self custody is more than "going on-chain" it is primarily to understand how to keep your keys secure. A new user will not know how to do that right-out-the-gate, therefore expect a new user's nsec is probably also throw-away.
Cashu solves the onboarding problem and this is why ZEUS (nprofile…2xhz) , maybe one of the best mobile wallets out there, has also chosen it as an onboarding pathway.
brunswick / Brunswick
npub1c8…q6lkc
2026-05-07 15:20:27 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…8a35
Author Public Key
npub1c856kwjk524kef97hazw5e9jlkjq4333r6yxh2rtgefpd894ddpsmq6lkcPublished at
2026-05-07 15:20:27 UTCEvent JSON
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"created_at": 1778167227,
"kind": 1,
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"content": "It should be thought of as matters of degree of custody, degree of risk tolerance, separation of concerns and asymmetry of incentives.\n\nThe mint operator is incentivized to keep honest in order to continue receiving lightning revenues. One should not possess more than a few thousand sats in a cashu mint, or whatever amount you are tolerant to risk. You can offload your excessive balance into a self-custodial lightning wallet, such as Zeus. If you are a serious user, you can run your own mint - even one on your phone connected to your own lightning channels.\n\nFor onboarding users, using a centralized mint should be sufficient - because firstly, you aren't advocating any particular mint, and secondly, a new user shouldn't need to worry about self custody right out the gate because it's complicated, and thirdly, moving to true self-custody is part of the learning experience.\n\nnostr:nprofile1qqsqgc0uhmxycvm5gwvn944c7yfxnnxm0nyh8tt62zhrvtd3xkj8fhgpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtcpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43z7gwae9u's notion of creating Bitcoin wallets from the same seed as the nostr nsec does not solve the self-custody problem because self custody is more than \"going on-chain\" it is primarily to understand how to keep your keys secure. A new user will not know how to do that right-out-the-gate, therefore expect a new user's nsec is probably also throw-away. \n\nCashu solves the onboarding problem and this is why nostr:nprofile1qqsrf5h4ya83jk8u6t9jgc76h6kalz3plp9vusjpm2ygqgalqhxgp9gpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kytcprfmhxue69uhhxetwv35hgtnwdaekvmrpwfjjucm0d5hs592xhz , maybe one of the best mobile wallets out there, has also chosen it as an onboarding pathway. ",
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