noisevault on Nostr: The beauty of Bitcoin is not that you HAVE to minimize trust, but that you can. ...

The beauty of Bitcoin is not that you HAVE to minimize trust, but that you can. People can choose to make trade-offs for a multitude of reasons.

Imagine a group of lightning nodes ( trust minimized) who belong to a federated Chaumian mint. They can use ecash to settle debts amongst themselves. They can even concievably integrate this in the node software. The end user making a lightning payment takes on none of these risks as they for through these efficient modes. But the nodes introduce trust only amongst themselves to benefit liquidity.

Or consider the #Aqua wallet. Using fully trust minimized trade-offs to make and receive payments over lightning (hot wallet) while allowing the user to store on the base layer (cold wallet), and liquid BTC (warm wallet). In this case the user DOES take on the risk of the federation colluding, bit no one forces them to. And they can minimize the amount in separate there. They can also choose to only use the base layer.

All of this possible ONLY because of what you are saying about how Bitcoin works. It's beautiful!