hong
Hong Kim

PUBLIC AUDITABILITY and PRIVATE OWNERSHIP can safely coexist with Bitcoin.
This is a unique superpower of Bitcoin.
Bitwise will continue to champion this unique property in our bitcoin ETFs.
To be clear, publishing addresses isn't a panacea. You still need auditors for attestation on the liability side. You need to be mindful of operational business privacy concerns.
But for public investment vehicles like bitcoin ETFs where all of this information (e.g. custodian, daily inflows/outflows, etc) is already public, the bias should be greatly towards publishing your addresses. It increases public confidence for your products and for the network as a whole.
Below is a screenshot of a webpage that mempool dot space (a popular bitcoin block explorer) built for our bitcoin ETF (BITB), completely independent of Bitwise, utilizing our published addresses: bitwise.mempool.space/wallet/BITB
Anyone can verify that the aggregate balance of bitcoin in our addresses on the mempool page match what is disclosed on our site: bitbetf.com
You might think this is trivial. You already trust KPMG (KPMG is our auditor for BITB) so who is this helping? Well, every six months there's a crisis of confidence in bitcoin ETFs with claims that the ETFs don't have the bitcoin. That the ETFs are lending out the bitcoin. All of this is completely unproductive noise that our space would be able to move past if public investment vehicles like bitcoin ETFs took additional steps to publish their addresses. We're 1 year into launch and BITB is still the only US bitcoin ETF that publishes its addresses.
We believe publishing bitcoin addresses for BITB serves the interest of public investors and the Bitcoin network and ecosystem as a whole and we're committed to this practice at Bitwise.
--
BITB Disclosures & Prospectus: http://bitbetf.com/welcome. BITB is not an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and is not afforded its protections. BITB is not suitable for all investors. BITB is subject to significant risk and heightened volatility.
https://blossom.primal.net/d8900d23ddf53f3945276c4ecd2971ffb30ca701b432e2eaf5b10a3555d36380.png
https://blossom.primal.net/db17ab18170f41d9f0e2deb1f6a16f64b83b0a0929d10376395633397b7521cc.png

2025-02-20 16:00:15 UTC

Extremely excited to have the legendary Jonathan Bier joining Bitwise as an advisor.
He is the author of “The Blocksize War”, the man behind the famous BitMEX Research blog and previous Developer Grants program, and someone who’s cared for Bitcoin incredibly deeply for so long. I personally respect him a lot.
Jonathan will advise us on how to best support team Bitcoin!
https://m.primal.net/PERm.jpg

2025-02-19 16:23:23 UTC

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we paid out the donation in bitcoin though!

2025-02-18 19:28:40 UTC

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Donation by Bitwise Investment Advisers, LLC, the Fund’s Sponsor.
For more information, visit bitbetf.com.
RISKS AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION
This material must be preceded or accompanied by a prospectus. Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. To obtain a current prospectus visit bitbetf.com/welcome.
BITB is not suitable for all investors. An investment in BITB is subject to a high degree of risk, has the potential for significant volatility, and could result in significant or complete loss of investment. BITB is not an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 (the “1940 Act”) and therefore is not subject to the same protections as mutual funds or ETFs registered under the 1940 Act. An investment in BITB is not a direct investment in bitcoin.
Bitwise Investment Advisers, LLC serves as the sponsor of the fund. Foreside Fund Services, LLC serves as the Marketing Agent for BITB, and is not affiliated with Bitwise Investment Advisers, LLC, Bitwise or any of its affiliates.

2025-02-18 19:27:41 UTC

Today, Bitwise is donating $150,000 to support Bitcoin open-source developers, who work tirelessly to secure and maintain the network.
When the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF (BITB) launched, we committed to donating 10% of its gross profits each year. We’re delighted to make good on that promise with this first annual donation.
Three fantastic non-profit organizations with established track records—Brink, @nprofile…pqk6, and @nprofile…hv7w—will allocate the funds. We’re grateful for the work they do.
Thank you to the investors who’ve chosen Bitwise and BITB among many options. This donation is made possible because of your choice. We hope you’re as proud as we are to support Bitcoin open-source developers!
https://m.primal.net/PBvo.jpg

2024-09-26 02:37:03 UTC

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yeah agreed on all of this. need be okay with missing the popular thing for the sanity and authenticity

2024-09-26 01:28:52 UTC

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yeah it takes more conscious effort to curate if you go following but there is definitely more meaning to your feed that way

2024-09-26 01:27:55 UTC

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i like the ppl here and would like to keep in touch with them and a light way to keep in touch is flowing their public thoughts

2024-09-26 01:26:39 UTC

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yeah it’s useful as like check the front page of the newspaper type way

2024-09-26 01:25:38 UTC

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great to be back! never truly left (i’ve been a lurker) but good to be back to the original mode 🙂

2024-09-26 01:24:35 UTC

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great to be back 🙏

2024-09-26 00:24:00 UTC

was reflecting on when i fell off the habit of opening nostr everyday and it was when i changed the sorting algo on primal to “trending 24hr”
at the time i was traveling with limited time and thought it would help see the important notes at a glance but i think what actually happened was that nostr became more like an impersonal news site to me (akin to hacker news) and less of a social app that i spend time with ppl everyday
changed the algo back to chronological notes from ppl i follow. we’ll see if this does the trick!

2024-08-19 17:49:15 UTC

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thank you!

2024-08-19 17:43:44 UTC

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thank you! yeah i’m back

2024-08-19 17:39:49 UTC

excited to share today that bitwise acquired etc group!
they are an exceptional team that manages the largest spot bitcoin ETP in europe (BTCE)
this deal:
- brings bitwise's bitcoin ETP AUM >55,000 btc (>$3B)
- expands our market to EU
grateful and excited for what's ahead —
https://m.primal.net/KEmf.png

2024-05-25 23:25:23 UTC

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i agree bitcoin / LN + nostr can do a lot. don’t know if it can do everything and ethereum currently does nothing but i agree that the vc pump for vaporware stuff can be frustrating and damaging

2024-05-25 23:19:17 UTC

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yeah i do wonder why stablecoin issuers like tether haven’t used sidechains like liquid. do you have a view?

2024-05-25 23:17:01 UTC

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sorry not educated enough on rgb to have a view

2024-05-25 23:13:43 UTC

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US spot etfs require a mature regulated futures market. we don’t yet have cme futures for any of those things so basically not possible for the next 3 yrs at least

2024-05-25 23:12:39 UTC

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bitcoin’s focus is definitely a strength

2024-05-25 23:10:48 UTC

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i think ironically ppl are trying to do that now with bitcoin l2s that intend to run evms (eg alpen labs). still hard to build a trustless two way peg (bridge) without softforks. so the short answer is that currently a trustless version of using bitcoin as the base currency of another chain is just not possible.

2024-05-25 23:07:44 UTC

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that there was a premine (ico)

2024-05-25 23:07:00 UTC

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public as in public access rather than public cloud but i understand your point that non money use cases don’t need blockchains

2024-05-25 23:03:14 UTC

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i agree that the scammers and hype men can be insufferable and eth ppl should do better. but it’s also the dynamics of what’s most visible on twitter. like if you just went by twitter you might think op_cat taproot wizards represent a big part of bitcoin culture

2024-05-25 22:52:54 UTC

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yes. we’d use a third party custodian (like coinbase as you suggested or fidelity/anchorage/bitgo/etc all support eth custody out of the box as well).

2024-05-25 22:49:17 UTC

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centralization concerns are real but when etfs hold a small percentage of the supply (gold etfs hold 6% of all gold supply; for bitcoin so far it’s about 3-4%) i don’t know if the launch of eth etfs fundamentally change the dynamics that much

2024-05-25 22:46:52 UTC

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not particularly a fan of drive chains and tx fees have been pretty high in recent months but i hear what you’re saying

2024-05-25 22:33:04 UTC

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bitcoin could indeed swallow everything

2024-05-25 00:12:35 UTC

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i think of ETFs are mostly a vehicle that brings public market liquidity (stock exchange trading liquidity) to bitcoin's market. it's like an IPO like thing. the asset is the same. liquidity around it changes a lot. bitcoin's price went up a lot since the ETF moment and i think it's a rational upward pricing by the market liking the same asset even more with more liquidity

2024-05-25 00:09:40 UTC

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i don't necessarily disagree with most of what you're saying here. but even if most of the stuff that trades on uniswap is just gambling non-custodial trading itself is a good idea. we would want the world to move more towards stablecoin + non-custodial trading rather than the existing custodial exchange paradigm.

2024-05-24 23:23:10 UTC

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will have to work through the details but most likely yes. likely through this entity (https://twitter.com/ProtocolGuild)

2024-05-24 22:36:27 UTC

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sorry to disappoint. anything in particular about the above that bothers you? just launching an eth etf to begin with?

2024-05-24 21:53:10 UTC

yes bitwise is launching an ethereum etf
i'm bitcoin first but not bitcoin only and if that's upsetting i'll take the heat. replies / dms open.
fwiw i think bitcoin and ethereum are completely different things. i know it can be super annoying when eth maxis are like "eth is even more sound than bitcoin!" but nobody takes that seriously. bitcoin is undeniably king as decentralized non-government money and that's not really up for debate
imo the question is around whether bitcoin wants to swallow the full range of public computing needs or leave room for the non core use cases (everything outside of sovereign money). i mean, stablecoins are undeniably a thing. non-custodial trading (uniswap) is also undeniably a thing.
i'm very happy that bitcoin hasn't morphed to make any of those things too easy on bitcoin. making stablecoins easier means making general token issuance easier. making non-custodial trading easier on bitcoin means more MEV risk on bitcoin. i'm happy that those experiments are playing out outside of bitcoin. maybe where i differ with many bitcoiners is that i am happy that those experiments are still happening.
anyways, happy to discuss this more. didn't want to seem like i'm hiding from this issue.

2024-05-24 21:00:43 UTC

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let's go. i know it's all getting better 🙏

2024-05-24 20:47:17 UTC

notifications is still my top pain point with @npub12vk…pugg. it needs to be grouped! don't need individual full scroll notifications for each like!

2024-05-24 20:44:44 UTC

last week on my citadel dispatch rip with @npub1qny…95gx i talked about how unbelievable it is that the BANKING LOBBY pushing for the equal treatment of bitcoin advocating for repeal of things like SAB 121 (unfair accounting treatment of bitcoin that makes it financially not viable for banks to service bitcoin)
well, since the rip we've really been seeing the full force of that political power shift. the bill that repeals SAB 121 went through both house and the senate.
so stuff like unfair accounting treatments or bans of regulated entities to touch or service bitcoin, those things i have increasing confidence will be sorted out soon (which is good news b/c it means more ppl will be able to buy bitcoin with less friction; imagine opening your normal banking app and being able to buy bitcoin there).
the real fight now that remains in a tough place that we need to really focus our energy on feels like protecting our ability to interact with bitcoin the asset and network in a non-custodial way which governments are increasingly focused on pushing out while financial firms are trying to move closer to bitcoin.
it was a crazy week so didn't have time to post earlier but was really happy to see the peer-to-peer rights fund come together this week. everyone should check it out and donate! bitcoin policy institute doing incredible work. https://p2prights.org/

2024-05-24 20:26:19 UTC

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let me know if you have any questions / thoughts after listening to this rip!
we talked a lot about:
- importance of dev donations and how we thought about our program
- the good and bad of a bitcoin ETF and how we really need in-kind redemptions to make it better
- the evolving political landscape and how ETFs have changed the incentives for tradfi banks etc
- importance of nostr and ecash
#note1hpt…fct6

2024-05-24 20:20:03 UTC

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hard to get into all the details of the NAV and ETF mechanics here but i agree with your sentiment in general that bitcoiners should be skeptical and we need more transparency. that's the reason bitwise shared our bitcoin holding addresses (the only bitcoin ETF to do so) and we also work with hoseki to do proof of reserves.

2024-05-23 22:45:51 UTC

crazy week

2024-05-16 13:55:44 UTC

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the book was honestly a masterpiece 🙏 esp loved learning more about the individual characters of the cypherpunk era that i only knew surface level before

2024-05-15 01:28:48 UTC

going on citadel dispatch tomorrow! come watch and ask questions 🙏
#note19eu…zfk2

2024-04-25 03:24:09 UTC

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if there are thousands of mints running locally to the communities they support? we have tor, bittorrent, etc. things that anyone can easily run with a small degree of altruism or reciprocity can survive

2024-04-24 23:46:43 UTC

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yeah ecash continues to blow my mind 😆
i’m coming to the oslo freedom forum (put on by HRF) in norway in june!

2024-04-24 20:48:32 UTC

ecash is how we win

2024-04-16 00:11:22 UTC

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will do!

2024-04-15 21:44:37 UTC

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go through brink, opensats, and hrf.
shared a bit more on the thinking here: https://primal.net/e/note1c82kj5yqpaf6w8mulqkmacm2z977ze0hempqv7zqnuhrgvrqymxqhez856

2024-04-15 21:40:28 UTC

i’m going to be at the MIT bitcoin expo this weekend (to talk about bitcoin etfs and our dev donation program)
who else is coming? would love to meet folks

2024-04-12 13:50:44 UTC

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bc there’s still (sadly) a decent audience that’s not reachable via nostr even amongst honest bitcoiners

2024-04-11 23:59:45 UTC

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yeah both very active tho opensat’s nostr fund is a separate fund

2024-04-11 23:58:19 UTC

i find myself trying to post on nostr first as a nod to the network even if i later cross post to X

2024-04-11 05:33:03 UTC

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would love to at some point! maybe not via the bitcoin etf but would hope to via bitwise somehow

2024-04-11 03:38:06 UTC

we put care into designing bitwise’s bitcoin etf donation mechanism
features:
- *no strings attached* donations
- to established non profit orgs rather than individuals to be further arm’s length from devs
- three orgs (open sats, brink, hrf) rather than one to reduce bias and increase reach
- recurring annual donation tied to 10% of profit of the etf to increase transparency and predictability
-long term commitment (10 years)
yes you can dunk on it as “wall street money” but not all wall street money is the same and we put effort into reducing potential for harm while still funding devs
my view is that every actor benefiting from bitcoin should bias towards funding devs while being mindful of harm donors can create (lmk if bitwise can be doing better here! open to feedback for sure but disagree with the idea that etf profits as a funding source is fundamentally corrupt or bad)

2024-04-09 19:58:06 UTC

receiving some questions about this. i’m not knowledgeable about the matter since i don’t believe matt is referring to bitwise’s bitcoin etf here.
fwiw we’re still very much committed to donating 10% of profits of our bitcoin etf to open source bitcoin devs (via opensats, brink, and hrf) as announced.
#note1dpq…8tmm

2024-03-22 00:13:48 UTC

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oh amazing. then am i reading this correctly that the max zap limit for my account currently is 11 million sats?

2024-03-21 22:52:14 UTC

is there a zap limit? or just whatever LN liquidity allows?

2024-03-21 14:53:04 UTC

cannot stop thinking about ecash send help

2024-03-21 14:49:19 UTC

this podcast ep was so good.
few new ecash things that clicked for me:
- you can deterministically generate secrets for the ecash tokens from a seed so that ecash can be backed up and restored with similar UX to bitcoin
- the multi-source multi-destination atomic LN tx thing is just next level for practical privacy and censorship resistance holy shit
#note1cat…lusd

2024-03-21 00:52:45 UTC

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yeah feel this

2024-03-21 00:36:58 UTC

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this was the issue. tysm!

2024-03-21 00:36:37 UTC

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it was a settings issue. ty

2024-03-20 23:40:36 UTC

hmm damus doesn’t render images immediately and require a tap to load/render?

2024-03-20 22:09:54 UTC

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i’m on tim cook’s serfdom unfortunately

2024-03-20 22:09:27 UTC

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would be happy to pay a relay. which do you recommend?

2024-03-20 21:58:39 UTC

i like primal but notifications are pretty bad (likes not collapsing is really tough). trying out damus for a bit here. multi client open network FTW

2024-03-20 21:56:26 UTC

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oh great. that wasn’t so bad! got purple. i guess no easy way of doing recurring sat payments monthly?

2024-03-20 21:49:40 UTC

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wait can i not pay for purple with sats?

2024-03-20 21:48:27 UTC

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oh shit it worked! okay gonna play around with damus for a while now

2024-03-20 21:31:39 UTC

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i’d use damus but i can’t seem to zap on it. am i doing something wrong?

2024-03-20 18:38:03 UTC

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yeah totally. i’m just trying to understand what the trust assumptions exactly are 😅

2024-03-20 18:28:14 UTC

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it's a real site that arkb's official website links to as its proof of reserves: https://21shares.com/en-US/product/ARKB

2024-03-20 18:26:47 UTC

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am i dumb for trying to make sense here

2024-03-20 18:24:35 UTC

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but real ppl send this to me as a proof of reserves and i can't understand how it works

2024-03-20 18:18:07 UTC

trying to understand the chainlink proof of reserves product for bitcoin etfs. for example this is the site for arkb (https://data.chain.link/feeds/ethereum/mainnet/arkb-por)
how does this work? seems like it's not really tied to the bitcoin blockchain and is simply a custodian attestation but how do the chainlink oracles get access to arkb's bitcoin balance at coinbase? it's non public information no?

2024-03-20 17:39:20 UTC

i’m willing to pay sats to good relays and good clients. please charge me for services i value. ad attention based internet of the past has set bad norms and we need to break out of them.

2024-03-19 16:27:16 UTC

now that i *use* sats (zap ppl everyday), sats feel more money-like to me intuitively. there's something primal about using a form of money that makes you believe that it is money. i'm excited for the world to bypass the whole intellectual journey of "is bitcoin money?" and just intuitively experience bitcoin as money by using it

2024-03-19 16:20:34 UTC

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can send to anyone. they need to redeem (or kind of like “claim”) the esats at the mint and can send it out via LN to themselves somewhere else, keep it there.
also if you’re at another mint you like better the mints can swap ecash so that you end up with your preferred ecash

2024-03-19 15:40:10 UTC

when ppl say offline payments is possible with ecash, is that practically true? yes i can give you a ecash token offline (via QR code scan or paper mail or something) but wouldn’t the recipient need an internet connection to check with the mint for double spending? so the payment can be initiated offline but cannot be completed offline. is this wrong?

2024-03-19 15:36:58 UTC

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the UX step that confused me:
https://m.primal.net/HmSb.png

2024-03-19 15:32:42 UTC

CORRECTION: this was my misunderstanding. enuts indeed creates ecash tokens for you upon LN deposit in 1 step. i mistakenly thought it didn’t bc in the payment flow there’s a “create token” step but my understanding now is that it this is more of a ecash token selection step (and maybe if you don’t have the right denominations in your wallet you’d break up a bigger token to smaller tokens so there can be a create token process interacting with the mint but that’s not a necessity).
#note13wf…evtd

2024-03-19 05:18:29 UTC

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oh interesting! didn’t understand that it worked this way under the hood.

2024-03-19 03:12:45 UTC

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yes

2024-03-19 03:12:30 UTC

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pinging @npub1t0n…jgqv for help here

2024-03-19 02:01:20 UTC

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i haven't used it much as a daily driver yet so can't say much but i love the principles behind it and the product iteration. will share more as i start using it!

2024-03-19 02:00:21 UTC

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i'm an iphone user so amethyst not an option. @npub16c0…6nvr send help!

2024-03-19 00:11:01 UTC

i like how mutiny calls it “esats” instead of “ecash”. it makes it very clear from a upfront terminology point of view what the distinction of this new generation of ecash is from attempts of the past: it’s backed by sats instead of fiat.
https://m.primal.net/HmJw.png

2024-03-18 23:46:46 UTC

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okay let me play around with fedimint ecash on mutiny and see if the UX is different there!

2024-03-18 23:43:15 UTC

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strong take

2024-03-18 23:24:16 UTC

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doesn't enuts work in this way? where i send it sats via LN but it doesn't issue ecash tokens in return immediately and i have to speficially mint ecash tokens if I want to send them to you?

2024-03-18 23:04:56 UTC

personally i feel cashu would be easier to understand if the default UX was that all sats sent to the mint are immediately issued as ecash tokens back to me rather than that being a separate step at payment time

2024-03-18 22:07:22 UTC

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enjoying it a lot!

2024-03-18 22:07:01 UTC

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wait are HTLCs even involved? this isn’t lightning payments but rather just minting and redeeming ecash tokens?

2024-03-18 21:59:26 UTC

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yeah in general the blow up is an issue (every like becomes it's own notification row) but it's extra worse when you get tagged in someone elses' note and your own notifications get blown out by that notes' notifications

2024-03-18 21:58:18 UTC

ecash noob question: even if theoretically ecash transactions are private, in practice given apps like enuts don't push you to create ecash tokens ahead of time and the moment of token creation (mint) is coupled with the payment moment (burn) doesn't the mint operator have pretty good visibility into who paid whom?

2024-03-18 21:53:37 UTC

top UX struggle w/ primal right now for me:
if someone tags me on a note and it goes viral i have no way of not getting notifications on that and it basically makes my personal notifications unfollowable for a while until that note dies down

2024-03-07 19:34:31 UTC

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aw too kind! hope to see you again soon!

2024-03-07 17:19:14 UTC

doing an AMA on stacker news for the next hour! feel free to ask silly things
https://stacker.news/items/454701

2024-03-07 16:54:53 UTC

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nah this isn’t even rolled out to the coinbase app yet

2024-03-07 16:43:24 UTC

update: coinbase custody now supports sending to taproot (bech32m) addresses!
not rolled out to the retail coinbase app yet but soon.
once coinbase graduates from this list then it's really just binance we need to get onboard?
(source: whentaproot.org)
https://m.primal.net/HidC.png